Sustainable-energy supplier Eneco has joined as a partner on Neptune Energy’s 2-year PosHYdon pilot, the world’s first offshore green hydrogen plant in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.
Planned to begin production later in 2021, the pilot aims to integrate new and existing energy systems using offshore wind, gas, and hydrogen in the North Sea. It is expected to yield up to 5,000 MWh of clean hydrogen in the first year.
In the pilot, electricity from offshore wind farms 25 km north of the Neptune-operated Q13a platform could ultimately power hydrolysis, which converts seawater into demineralized water and then into clean hydrogen. The green gas will be pumped onshore over existing pipelines, reaching as far as northern Germany.
The aim of the pilot is to gain experience integrating working energy systems at sea and the production of hydrogen in an offshore environment.
PosHYdon’s newest partner, Eneco, will supply simulated wind data from its offshore wind farm to model the use of electricity generated to power the electrolysis process.
Initially, the 1-MW containerized unit, the first fully electrified offshore oil platform in the Dutch North Sea, will be powered via onshore cable.
Hydrogen appears to be riding a research and investment wave.
Last year, Stanford University researchers devised a way to generate hydrogen fuel using solar power, electrodes, and saltwater from San Francisco Bay. Their findings demonstrate a new way of separating hydrogen and oxygen gas from seawater with electricity. Existing water-splitting methods rely on highly purified water, which is a precious resource and costly to produce.
“Hydrogen is an appealing option for fuel because it doesn’t emit carbon dioxide,” said Stanford professor Hongjie Dai. “Burning hydrogen produces only water and should ease worsening climate-change problems.”
Overseas, the UK government launched its Hydrogen Taskforce, offering a consortium of major producers, storage specialists, and manufacturers up to £1 billion (approximately $1 million) of public money to start building the foundations of a hydrogen economy.
Later this year, ITM Power expects to open what it claims will be the world’s biggest electrolysis factory for clean hydrogen in Sheffield, England.
PosHYdon is a spin-off of the North Sea Energy program, a public/private research consortium of more than 30 public and private Dutch parties from the energy value chain.
It is also an initiative of Nexstep, the Dutch association for decommissioning and reuse, and TNO, the Netherlands organization for applied scientific research.
Eneco joins the project following Neptune’s announcement in early April regarding Dutch grid operator Gasunie, which manages and maintains infrastructure for large-scale transport and gas storage in the Netherlands and northern Germany. The company already had several hydrogen pilots on land.
Noordgastransport and NOGAT previously joined the partnership; both are owners of large gas-transport pipelines in the North Sea.
Other partners in the Q13a-A platform include EBN (40%) and TAQA Offshore (10%).
Lex de Groot, managing director of Neptune Energy in the Netherlands, said, “The Netherlands is in a strong position to lead the transition to a hydrogen economy. We have the Dutch North Sea for the production of wind and gas, the ports as logistics hubs, the industrial clusters that want to switch to green molecules, and excellent infrastructure for transport and storage.”
See the video below for a brief explainer on how the PosHYdon project intends to proceed.
