Metacon's Helbio unit has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with DEDA, PowerCell and Soluforce for creating a "Hydrogen Village" demonstration and testing park for innovative hydrogen-based energy systems. The MoU involves establishing a co-operation between the four companies, aiming at developing the project towards a "Hydrogen Village". In the project, several technical energy solutions involving gas as main resource, reforming the gas to hydrogen and electricity production for households via fuel cells will be evaluated and tested. The first Hydrogen Village targets quantifying benefits related to energy efficiency, reduction of GHG emissions and other environmental parameters.

The plan is that the entire project should display a high degree of automation and limited or no need for personnel to be involved in the operation. Control software and system automation procedures allowing for start-up, steady state operation and shutdown procedures should be done automatically, without need for user intervention and thus resulting in a fully autonomous and automatic system. Monitoring of the operation will be done remotely.

DEDA will play the key enabling role for the project and the parties will also jointly seek government and other financial support.