I detect some half truths and a LOT of weasel wording in this sales pitch. First the half truth.
As the first ever live demonstration of hydrogen in homes...
That is a flat out lie. Up until the North Sea gas production made Natural Gas very inexpensive to use the UK had a large number of "Town Gas" manufacturing facilities where raw coal was converted into a blend of Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen gas for home and industrial gas burning appliances. The last of these facilities was closed in the late 1970's.
Now for some of the weasel wording. Especially troubling is the statement
The change from normal gas to blended gas during the live pilot will not cost customers more. We have worked with Ofgem, the energy regulator to ensure this is the case.
If you parse this statement the implication is clear, supplying renewable hydrogen is more expensive than supplying natural gas, but during the testing and approval phase the renewable hydrogen company is eating the extra cost to condition people to using the new gas blend. Once they have full approval for deployment and leave the testing phase however that will no longer be the case and they will be able to charge more, however much more they can convince the regulators is necessary.
Other weaseling is along the lines of
For our North East demonstration, we are at the stage of contacting everyone who will be involved in that demonstration – more than 650 homes – and asking them to book a visit from our engineers who will carry out Gas Safe checks on their gas appliances and gather information on the range of appliances in the demonstration area. The Gas Safe checks will be free of charge.
As if they are saints for doing an advanced form of the annual check. The problem they do not mention is basic, any appliances that fail the Hydrogen safety check will have to be upgraded or replaced at the home owner/landlords expense before the test can go forward. No doubt if the UK government decides to go forward with this scheme legislation will be passed requiring all new appliances be hydrogen blend safety compliant and that older appliances be upgraded or replaced withing a certain date range to allow a more wide spread deployment of the blended gas.
The third set of weasel wording is in the little video they included that tacitly admits the largest commercial source of hydrogen is stripping natural gas of its carbon. This not only consumes energy in the stripping process to leave behind the carbon residue for disposal, it also results in hydrogen gas which has less energy on a volumetric basis than the original methane contained. So they admit in passing that to supply the entire nation with a 20% blend of hydrogen in methane gas supply will require not just the off peak renewable energy, but also a huge energy sink in the form of converting methane which could be directly consumed into hydrogen and carbon residue with a lower energy value plus the expense of disposing of the residue and making the conversion in the first place.
IOW beware sales pitches that sound to good to be true, because they always are. Yes, I think using off peak renewable energy to produce Hydrogen could be a good thing as an intermediate energy storage option much better than battery storage. However the idea of using it as a blending agent for methane based natural gas not so great an idea. Far better IMO to store the hydrogen at the electricity facilities and then use it as the fuel in fuel cells consuming hydrogen and air to produce electricity when the renewables are not available. That would stabilize the grid in a way renewables have serious problems doing and store the hydrogen in a place and manner at which the safety checks could be done frequently and professionally on well maintained equipment.
Loose hydrogen gas has a simply massive flammability range when it encounters a spark or open flame. Hydrogen as low as 4% concentration in air will burn. Methane flammability is only slightly better at 5% but it is much easier to contain and has a far lower tendency to leak because the molecules are much larger.
Piping hydrogen through thousands of miles of random pipe and millions of appliances is a recipe for leaking.
Heck take the hydrogen made via renewable powered electrolysis and use it to reformulate biomass into manufactured methane. That would be a carbon neutral solution and a heck of a lot safer than this blending plan.