As Switzerland electrifies its heating sector with heat pumps and adds more variable renewable generation to the grid, local distribution networks are starting to feel the strain. A new joint research project led by SPIN member Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, suggests that hydrogen fuel cells operating at the neighbourhood level could become a practical tool to manage these growing peak loads — while delivering useful heat at the same time.

The H2 Districts project, conducted at Empa’s research campus in Dübendorf, brought together Empa researchers with three industry partners: the St. Gallen-based Hälg Group, the Osterwalder Gruppe (also based in St. Gallen) and Zurich-based H2 Energy AG. Running from October 2023 to September 2025, the experiment tested how hydrogen fuel cells integrated into a local district energy cell could reduce stress on electricity networks during high-demand periods.

How the System Works

The core idea is straightforward: heat pumps are highly efficient, but when many of them switch on at the same time on a cold winter morning, they can overwhelm a neighbourhood’s electrical infrastructure. Rather than reinforcing every cable in the grid, the H2 Districts approach generates supplementary electricity locally using hydrogen fuel cells. That locally produced power is fed to the heat pumps, easing the load on the distribution network exactly when and where it matters most.

The team also captured a valuable by-product. Through purpose-built heat exchangers, the fuel cells delivered medium-temperature heat at around 35 degrees Celsius into the thermal network of Empa’s NEST innovation building and the wider Dübendorf campus — turning what would otherwise be waste heat into useful energy.

What the Numbers Show

Over two years of operation, the district energy cell flattened electricity consumption peaks and cut total peak-load costs by 10 percent. According to Empa’s project announcement, the experiment confirmed both the technical feasibility of hydrogen-based peak shaving and provided practical insights into how complex multi-energy systems can be controlled in real-world operation.

Our experiments showed that fuel cells can effectively balance electrical and thermal peak loads in buildings. Hydrogen-based peak-load coverage is technically feasible and yields valuable insights for controlling complex energy systems.

Binod Prasad Koirala, Deputy Head of Empa’s Urban Energy Systems research division

When green hydrogen — produced from renewable electricity via electrolysis — is used as the fuel, the system also contributes directly to CO₂ reduction, since the only on-site emission is water vapour.

SPIN Perspective

For the Swiss Power-to-X Collaborative Innovation Network, the H2 Districts results land at exactly the right moment. Switzerland’s energy strategy depends on three trends running in parallel: rapid heat-pump rollout, growing rooftop solar, and a phase-out of fossil heating. All three put pressure on local low-voltage grids, and the conventional answer — copper in the ground — is slow, expensive and disruptive.

The Empa study points to a more elegant alternative. By placing fuel cells where the strain occurs, neighbourhoods can use hydrogen as a flexible energy carrier that arrives by pipeline, truck or local production, and converts cleanly into electricity and useful heat exactly when both are needed. That is precisely the role Power-to-X technologies are designed to play: bridging sectors, decoupling generation from consumption in time, and squeezing more value out of every kilowatt-hour of renewable electricity.

A 10 percent cut in peak-load costs is a modest-sounding headline, but multiplied across thousands of Swiss neighbourhoods it represents real money — and, more importantly, a credible path to avoiding much costlier grid reinforcement. The collaboration between a public research institute and three SPIN-relevant industry players (an HVAC integrator, a fuel-cell hardware specialist and a hydrogen logistics company) is also exactly the kind of cross-sector partnership the SPIN ecosystem was built to enable. It is encouraging to see the model working in practice on Swiss soil.

Source: punkt4.info, 21 April 2026 · Empa project page