In the narrative of changing energy production environment, renewable sources of energy provide a fundamental basis for the growth of energy storage technologies. In particular, many settlements in Russia and other countries are located outside the centralized grids. With the goal of replacing diesel engines, a pilot project with solar panels produced 30 000 kWh. However, a support of energy storage systems is needed to ensure higher replacement percentage. The present paper introduces the development of a novel kW-scale power production unit that utilizes metal-hydride (MH) energy storage and 1 kW PEM fuel cell (FC). In the effort to enable the technology for autonomous applications, the novel concept of using FC exhaust air for hydrogen desorption process replacing an external heating agent was successfully proved. In the first two experiments, the limitations of the initial stage of the MH reactor were formulated. Warming up speed of the MH reactor was not sufficient to support the necessary hydrogen pressure level output. Third and fourth experiments provide possible solutions to this limitation: (i) higher load on the FC enable satisfactory warm-up speed of the MH reactor, (ii) higher initial pressure of MH reactor charge mitigates an initial pressure drop during the FC startup procedures. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.