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Siemens Gamesa and Siemens Energy work on green hydrogen solution

Published by , Editorial Assistant
Energy Global,


To reach the Paris Agreement goals, the world will need vast amounts of green hydrogen, and wind will provide a large portion of the power needed for its production. Siemens Gamesa and Siemens Energy have announced that they are joining forces combining their ongoing wind to hydrogen developments to address one of the major challenges of our decade — decarbonising the economy to solve the climate crisis. The companies are contributing with their developments to an innovative solution that fully integrates an electrolyser into an offshore wind turbine, as a single synchronised system, to directly produce green hydrogen.

The companies intend to provide a full-scale offshore demonstration of the solution by 2025 - 2026. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research has announced that the developments can be implemented as part of the ideas competition, ‘Hydrogen Republic of Germany’.

Over a timeframe of five years, Siemens Gamesa plans to invest €80 million and Siemens Energy is targeting to invest €40 million in the developments. Siemens Gamesa will adapt its development of one of the world’s most powerful turbines, the SG14-222 DD offshore wind turbine, to integrate an electrolysis system seamlessly into the turbine’s operations. By leveraging the company’s knowledge and experience with offshore wind, electric losses are reduced to a minimum, while a modular approach ensures a reliable and efficient operational set up for a scalable offshore wind-hydrogen solution. Siemens Energy will develop a new electrolysis product to not only meet the needs of the harsh maritime offshore environment and be in perfect sync with the wind turbine, but also to create a new competitive benchmark for green hydrogen.

The ultimate, fully-integrated offshore wind-to-hydrogen solution will produce green hydrogen using an electrolyser array located at the base of the offshore wind turbine tower, producing offshore hydrogen. The solution will lower the cost of hydrogen by being able to run off grid, opening up more and better wind sites. The companies’ developments will serve as a test bed for making large-scale, cost-efficient hydrogen production a reality and will prove the feasibility of reliable, effective implementation of wind turbines in systems for producing hydrogen from renewable energy.

The developments are part of the H2Mare initiative, which is a lighthouse project likely to be supported by ‘Hydrogen Republic of Germany’. The initiative, under the consortium lead of Siemens Energy, is a modular project consisting of multiple sub-projects to which more than 30 partners from industry, institutes and academia are contributing. Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa will contribute to it with their own developments in separate modular building blocks.

Hydrogen and its role in the green energy transition

Currently 80 million tpy of hydrogen are produced, and production is expected to increase by approximately 20 million t by 2030. Just 1% of that hydrogen is currently generated from green energy sources. The bulk is obtained from natural gas and coal, emitting 830 million tpy of CO2, more than the entire nation of Germany or the global shipping industry. Replacing this current polluting consumption would require 820 GW of wind generating capacity, 26% more than the current global installed capacity. Looking further ahead, many studies suggest that by 2050 production will have grown to about 500 million t, with a significant shift to green hydrogen. The expected growth will require between 1000 - 4000 GW of renewable capacity by 2050 in order to meet demand, which highlights the vast potential for growth in wind power.

Read the article online at: https://www.energyglobal.com/special-reports/14012021/siemens-gamesa-and-siemens-energy-work-on-green-hydrogen-solution/

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