Hi everyone, I'm Andrea and I'm the HS2 air quality manager.
Today I'm on one of our construction sites where we are
powered by cleaner, greener energy. Today I want to take
you on a tour to show you what that means in reality. Come
let's have a look. We've arrived at our hydrogen fuel
cell generators. We're directly replacing diesel for the use of
hydrogen. Let's go chat to Georgia and find out a little
bit more. So we deployed these hydrogen units to help
decarbonize our operations. These hydrogen units will power
our desanding plant and our bentonite farm to support the
construction of the crossover box. Let's go inside and visit
our engineer and take a look around. Hi, Andrea. Welcome
inside our green hydrogen generator. Now, this generator
has got five key components. We've got the fuel cell in the
back. That's where hydrogen from the cylinders you saw
outside and mix with oxygen from the air to react to form
electricity. The electricity is then fed from the fuel cell
into these inverters. Electricity is then fed into
these transformers. They step up the voltage and then behind
you is all of our control systems. What this means is
clean, zero carbon, zero emission electricity to power
our construction sites and the only by product is clean
drinkable water. You like to try some? Absolutely. Follow
me. Taste delicious. Following on from that exciting
innovation, let's go have a look at some fully electric
plants and machinery being used on site. Across HS2, we have a
range of fully electric equipment deployed across our
sites. Just behind me, we have our fully electric telehandler.
Not only is it zero emission, zero noise, but it's also being
recharged exclusively of main's power electricity. Let's head
over to the next site to see some more exciting green
innovation.
Welcome to our Canterbury Road site, a ventilation shop.
What's really exciting about this site is it is our first
diesel-free construction site on HS2. Let's head over to
Serena to find out how they've made this achievement. Yeah so
here at Canterbury Vent Shaft we have the aspiration of being
truly diesel free we've managed to achieve that by installing a
mains connection which is powered by 100% renewable
energy and we've also got one of the UK's first 100% electric
crawler cranes which we're really proud of and it's
helping us build the shaft here do you want to come and see how
it works? So, here we have our crane plugged into our main
supply so it's now running off 100% renewable energy and if we
just press this button here it's now up and running and
ready to start building the shaft. That's absolutely
fantastic and just so easy. It's great to see this type of
technology really being deployed on our day-to-day
activities on the ground. Shall we head over to the next site
to see what excitement waits us there.
Welcome to our Euston approaches site where our
trains will head into Euston station. Let's head over Harry
to find out a little bit more about what's happening on the
site. Here we are at our newly delivered tower crane. Powering
the tower crane is a brand new stage five generator on HVO
technology. Our stage five generators are much more
efficient, much quieter, and produce less emissions. On top
of this generator we have installed a brand new
innovation. The technology has been taken directly from
Formula One and it's flywheel energy storage which
when we connect it up to generators we can reduce the
size of generators massively which leads to massive fuel
savings greater efficiency and thus saving a lot of carbon and
beyond that we have also connects up to a battery which
at night when the loads are a lot lower for the crane and
it's not being used the battery kicks in which essentially
makes it silent for the local community. Let's move on to our
hybrid excavators.
Here we are at one of our hybrid excavators what hybrid
relies on is kinetic energy to supplement the engine that
improves efficiency, reduces fuel consumption and in turn
reduces carbon emissions. This is also powered from bio fuels
which leads to reduced carbon emissions and is cleaner for
the atmosphere. Well there you have it, all these new exciting
ways and trials and technologies being rolled out
across our construction sites to really become and truly
become diesel free.