One of the biggest problems with solar energy is that it varies inconsistently depending on the day and season. Many startups are working to improve daytime energy supply—saving energy during the day for use at night or during off-peak hours.
But few people have addressed the problem of off-season storage of solar energy. What if households could save the vast amounts of solar energy produced during the sunny months and use it for heating and power in the winter?
So far this vision has not been realized. Batteries are too expensive and short-lived, prohibitively expensive and inefficient, so hydrogen, which produces no greenhouse gases when burned, was excluded from the solution.
Now a Norwegian startup says it could bring a solid hydrogen solution to market within the next few years. Norway is a country that might want to retain some sunshine during the cold winter months.
The startup Photoncycle has a space in the basement of the Oslo Science Park accelerator. It looks more like a laboratory than an office: on the floor sits a copper cylinder the size of a chair, wrapped in thick foam. This is the revolutionary Photoncycle technology.
The company hopes to install a larger cylindrical model measuring about three cubic meters on the ground a few yards from the house. The cylinder contains a patented solid hydrogen solution that has a more efficient storage capacity than batteries or liquid hydrogen.
Solar panels on the roofs of nearby buildings will provide the system with energy stored in the units. Excess energy will be sold to the grid.
The lack of storage for solar energy generated in the summer results in a “significant mismatch” between production and consumption times: “This is a big challenge in how to make renewable energy systems work properly,” says Björn Brandtsaeg, founder of Photoncycle.
“The remaining 50% becomes increasingly useless because once it is produced, it is essentially thrown away or diminished. If you can store excess energy and then release it in winter or when you have energy needs, then you have a real opportunity to make a difference.”
Brandtsaeg is an experienced infrastructure entrepreneur. Two of his previous companies were large: an energy infrastructure company in Georgia and Clean Energy Group, a Norwegian renewable energy company. By comparison, Photoncycle has just nine employees and has been funded for the past two years by Brandzaeg’s own money and Startup Lab money.
The idea for the company came about while Brandzaeg was a visiting scholar at MIT, where he was part of a team studying the future of energy storage and how to balance an energy grid made up of 100% renewable energy. A non-technical entrepreneur teamed up with scientists to find a non-flammable solution that doesn’t lose much energy during the conversion process.
Brandtsaeg held up a chalk-like substance: “With this you can store an energy density 20 times greater than a lithium battery.”
“We anchor hydrogen molecules into solids, essentially fixing them. We use a reversible high temperature fuel cell, so we are helping to develop a fuel cell that can produce hydrogen and electricity in the same cell,” he said.
This means hydrogen does not need to be cooled, making it less flammable and denser than lithium-ion batteries.
“Everyone knows that when you move hydrogen in and out of a fuel cell, there are losses. In our system, the loss is actually heat,” Brandzaeg said.
“You can actually use waste heat to efficiently power a home—70 percent of a home’s energy needs are for heating,” he said.
The system includes solar panels that connect directly to existing infrastructure and can then replace natural gas with renewable energy in a combined heat and power system. Brandtsaeg said installation will take about a day.
One would assume that the Norwegian company would test the product in Norway first. However, since Norway has some of the cheapest energy in Europe, it will not have the same cost-saving effect for users.
Instead, Brandsag chose neighboring Denmark, a country with some of the highest energy prices in Europe, to be the first to launch the technology.
“Denmark is a suitable market for the launch, with around 400,000 homes heated by gas and oil,” he said.
Denmark has also decided to phase out gas heating by 2030, which will encourage people to look for new sources of heat, Brandzaeg said.
Consumers will receive a fully integrated power plant through a subscription model, paying a fixed monthly fee equivalent to an energy cost of less than €0.10 per kWh. For energy produced and sold online, Photoncycle has a profit-sharing plan with consumers receiving half of the revenue from energy sold.
Brandtsaeg said that by installing and connecting enough units, it could become a virtual power plant that could start trading energy on European energy markets.
“This allows you to not only sell energy as a service to customers, but also become a very large energy player in the energy market.”
The founders hope to triple the size of the team and plan to sell 10,000 units in Denmark by 2025 and install them by 2027.
Brandtsaeg said the idea of ​​using solid hydrogen for energy storage arose several years ago, but companies had not yet used it for domestic purposes.
“The solid oxide fuel cells we use will soon be commercialized. So people mostly use them for larger industrial applications.”
With the implementation of the EU Solar Strategy, the installation of rooftop solar panels in the region is likely to increase further. The plan to make it mandatory for all existing public and commercial buildings over 250 square meters by 2027, and for all new residential buildings by 2029, is a strong boost to the Photoncycle movement.
“Elon Musk’s insight is that in order to beat gasoline cars, you need to provide something more attractive to people as an alternative. I think that’s a fundamental thing that you also need to think about when it comes to renewable energy,” he said.
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Mimi Billing is a senior reporter at Sifted, covering the Nordic countries and medical technology and can be found on X and LinkedIn.
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