The need to explore the use of renewable energy resources, in any way possible, is now considered as inevitable. The focus of this project is to utilize solar energy for the production of hydrogen from water. Both sunlight and water are available in abundance. As sunlight is available during day time, the photohydrogen produced can be stored and converted to electricity, whenever needed. The production of photohydrogen requires not only sunlight, but photocatalyst as well. A series of Ni/TiO2 photocatalysts with different Ni loading (2, 5, and 10 wt) were prepared via wet impregnation method followed by calcination at 300°C for a duration of 2 hours. Hydrogen production from water was conducted by using a 250 W/m2 halogen lamp for one hour. The best performing photocatalyst was 10 wt Ni/TiO2 giving 3.4 mL of hydrogen from H2O compared to the lower activity of TiO2 which produced only 1.9 mL of hydrogen from H2O. These values were obtained by using steady state light intensity; where else the available solar energy is highly transient in nature. The solar intensity fluctuates due to the apparent trajectory of the sun and also the meteorological conditions. The performance of the photocatalysts was modeled by using the measured solar insolation data. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.