SBRI Commercial Hydrogen Appliance, Boiler Cascade, and Ancillary Component Development Competition (Hy4Heat Work Package 5b)

BEIS wishes to appoint contractors to develop commercial hydrogen appliances, boiler systems and ancillary system components under a SBRI competition as part of the Hy4Heat programme. The competition is split into 5 lots, meeting the needs of different aspect of the Hy4Heat objectives.

This SBRI competition focuses on the development of commercial hydrogen appliances, boiler systems and ancillary system components to demonstrate the safe use of hydrogen as a fuel in providing commercial catering, heating and hot water requirements. It aims to provide critical evidence of end use application, safety, in-use emissions, and functionality.

The competition is split into five lots: • Lot 1: Catering and Production Heating • Lot 2: Dry Space Heating • Lot 3: Wet Space Heating • Lot 4: Combined Heat and Power • Lot 5: Ancillary System Components. The Competition will be delivered against specified milestones for each of the lots

It is expected that proposals will target projects which will maximise technical benefit in demonstrating the use of hydrogen in the commercial sector. This would likely include appliance types that are common in the market as well as those for which hydrogen replacements are more technically challenging to develop.

The total potential value of the Competition is up to £4.9m (excl. VAT) although BEIS may allocate less than this depending on the quality of the applications received. Up to 27 innovation projects will be funded through the competition (a maximum of two or three projects across each of the appliance types).

This Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition will run until March 2021, and is aiming to deliver: • Prototype Appliances that demonstrate the feasibility of commercial hydrogen appliance development. Prototypes may either be: • Safety certified, referred to as the core requirement of the ITT. or; • Fully certified and have demonstrated the safety certified appliances for a minimum of 2 months within an unoccupied demonstration trial. Referred to as the core+ requirement of the ITT. • Boiler Systems: Development of control systems for cascades of hydrogen boilers. • Ancillary System Components: A set of components demonstrating safe installation of hydrogen appliances in buildings. Categories have been made into sub-lots in order for bids within the same sub-category to be fairly assessed on cost. It is anticipated that between two and three projects per sub-category will be selected. Funding will be allocated to the highest scoring bids in each sub-lot, and then allocated in ranked order from the highest scores in each sub-lot until the funding limit is reached. Exceptions to this may include: • Bids of insufficient quality; • Bids that do not meet the ITT requirements; • If funding has been allocated to identical technology of a higher score; • If there is an imbalance of bids across the lots.