Renewables curtailment 'will help to bridge the gap' in creating green hydrogen

• Powering electrolysers with renewables generation that would certainly otherwise be stopped could be an efficient approach for generating green hydrogen in the coming years until the H2 sector gain from additional price declines, it was recommended throughout a panel discussion.

Speaking throughout the Green Hydrogen Summit 2022 yesterday, Pedro Almeida Fernandes, head of power generation at utility Endesa Portugal, said such a strategy "brings a lot of competition" to the cost of producing green hydrogen.

" Curtailment is currently contributing and will certainly contribute over the following couple of years. And it will certainly help to bridge the gap in rate up until that space is bridged highly by scale in industry," Almeida Fernandes said during the event, hosted by PV Tech publisher Solar Media in Lisbon.

He discussed that in markets such as Iberia, grid constraints mean designers are hybridising eco-friendly resources to raise the tons variable while taking advantage of grid connection points-- a technique seen in Portugal's recent solar public auction, in which utility EDP protected a contract for a floating PV project it intends to hybridise with a ground-mount solar farm as well as a wind plant.

Endesa earlier this year was granted connection rights to establish a EUR600 million (US$ 660 million) project in Portugal that will combine solar, wind, a battery energy storage system (BESS) and also a 500kW electrolyser for the production of green hydrogen. The electrolyser will utilize excess that exceed the BESS' storage space capabilities.

Endesa will certainly be able "to fully capture all the renewable resource created", staying clear of curtailment while improving the profitability of the renewables projects in the process, Almeida Fernandes stated.

" We can input this extra energy to the electrolyser at virtually the opportunity expense in order to be able to contend in H2 rate." Such a technique "brings a lot of competition" in cost, since the firm just has to recuperate the electrolyser investment, not the financial investment in renewables that produce the energy, Almeida Fernandes clarified.

He claimed green hydrogen can be "amazingly valuable" to decarbonise particular sector sections such as aviation as well as aquatic transportation. "I believe we must develop our projects ... to target extremely especially these vital consumptions to ensure that we can bring the economic situation towards green H2 quicker as well as quicker at an affordable rate."

According to Pedro Pereira, handling supervisor for Southern Europe at renewables programmer Eurowind Energy, the action in the direction of hydrogen "needs to be accelerated", but must be supported by government motivations.

He said during the panel discussion that these could be in the form of tax rebates or feed-in tariffs or some assistance at the usage level, adding that at some point it will certainly be possible "to drastically minimize the cost of green hydrogen to a portion of what it is right currently".

Pereira is confident that cost parity will be gotten to with other kinds of hydrogen production earlier than anticipated: "It's additionally possible to lower the void to blue and grey hydrogen as a result of the carbon taxes that will certainly often tend to increase."

According to Scott Crawford, systems designer at the European Marine Energy Centre, the larger the swing in electricity rates, the more opportunity hydrogen has of ending up being competitive. "We're seeing big spikes sometimes in the spot market prices for electricity at the moment. And also as those spikes grow, after that hydrogen comes to be more affordable," he claimed.

Crawford sees more powerful possibility for electrolysers powered by behind-the-meter renewables plants. He stated renewables asset proprietors will need to decide whether they need to create hydrogen or export electricity to the grid "since it will be much more profitable to export it to the grid possibly. However if you want the hydrogen, you might require to bite the bullet and also take that risk."