30.10.2026

Affordable Energy for Families – Hydrogen and Regional Energy Supply as an Opportunity

For many families, concerns about rising living costs and unpredictable energy prices are closely linked to the fear of no longer being able to afford their regular household expenses.

Added to this are concerns and fears about unexpectedly high energy bills and additional payments.

Low-income households and families in particular fear unpredictable, substantial gas and electricity bills that could exceed their monthly budgets.

The Real Threat of Energy and Housing Poverty

Energy is increasingly perceived as a luxury. This fear stems from the very real threat of being unable to heat one’s home adequately or, in the worst-case scenario, losing one’s home due to outstanding payments and financial difficulties.

Because of these uncertainties, we receive numerous enquiries from families seeking greater energy independence based on self-generated and stored hydrogen.

Hydrogen Self-Sufficiency for Families – A Mathematical Challenge

Hydrogen self-sufficiency for families usually fails because of a simple mathematical limitation:

Roofs are often too small to generate the amount of solar energy required to achieve an energy surplus, even on days with little sunshine and during the winter months.

Out of 100 kWh of clean solar electricity, only around 35–40 kWh of usable electricity remain after electrolysis (hydrogen production) and subsequent reconversion into electricity in a fuel cell.

However, if a sufficient energy surplus remains after covering daily consumption, the basic conditions for hydrogen production and storage are in place.

As a general rule of thumb, achieving genuine year-round energy self-sufficiency with seasonal hydrogen storage requires annual photovoltaic generation to be approximately twice the annual electricity demand. With an annual consumption of 8,000 kWh, a photovoltaic system generating approximately 16,000 to 20,000 kWh per year would need to be installed (corresponding to an installed capacity of approximately 16 to 20 kWp).

To generate and store enough electricity for the winter despite energy losses of up to 60%, the roof of a standard single-family home would often need to measure 150 to 200 square metres and have an optimal orientation towards the sun – conditions that are not frequently found in reality.

For this reason, we submitted an energy concept to the German Bundestag and the Bavarian State Parliament in the form of petitions as early as 2019. The concept proposed that new residential developments and smaller communities should jointly generate and feed in solar, wind and bioenergy, use this energy to produce hydrogen and store it centrally. All connected households would then be able to draw electricity from this shared supply whenever their own energy generation was insufficient or unavailable during the winter months.

Through this Gaussian distribution, families with smaller roof areas would also have been adequately supplied with energy.

Further advantages of this concept would have included:

-All connected households would no longer have needed oil, gas or other heating systems.

-Heat pumps could also have been supplied with self-generated electricity during the winter.

-For young families and low-income households, the savings on investment costs would have represented a significant advantage.

-Future maintenance and repair costs for individual heating systems would also have been eliminated.

-The risk of a blackout would have been eliminated through island-mode operation.

Unfortunately, both petitions were rejected, among other reasons, on the grounds that, from an economic perspective, CO₂ pricing offered an advantage over other climate protection measures because it directly placed a price on CO₂ emissions.