Posted on May 23, 2022
Swedish energy company Vattenfall has been awarded $11.6 million in innovation funding from the Net-Zero Innovation Portfolio Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply 2 fund by the UK Government.
Vattenfall said that the funding would be used to develop the world’s first hydrogen-producing offshore wind turbine, with the electrolyzer sited directly onto an existing operational turbine.
The pilot project at Vattenfall’s Offshore Wind Farm in Aberdeen Bay will have an output of 8 MW and will be able to produce enough hydrogen every day to power a hydrogen bus to travel 24,000 kilometers. The hydrogen will be piped to shore at Aberdeen Harbor.
“We are very happy with the Government funding. Placing hydrogen electrolyzers on offshore wind turbines is likely to be the quickest and cheapest way of providing fossil-free hydrogen at scale,” said Danielle Lane, UK Country Manager for Vattenfall.
The project – called Hydrogen Turbine 1 (HT1) – aims to be the first project in the world to test the full integration of hydrogen production with an offshore wind turbine. HT1 will also map out development and consent processes for large-scale hydrogen projects co-located with offshore wind farms to speed up future development.
The availability of large quantities of fossil-free hydrogen will play a key role in the decarbonization of heavy industry – predominantly in steel, chemicals, fertilizer production, and refining – as well as heavy transport.
According to Vattenfall, work will begin immediately with the goal of the first production as early as 2025.
In other recent company news, Vattenfall received a construction permit for an offshore wind farm at Kriegers Flak from the Swedish Government.
Kriegers Flak in the south of the Baltic Sea is one of Vattenfall’s Swedish offshore wind projects that has come the furthest in its development. Vattenfall’s application covers 40 to 50 wind turbines with a total capacity of approximately 640 MW.
With the permit from the Government, the project is now taking an important step forward. The company is still awaiting necessary permits as well as the electricity grid connection on land. Vattenfall is planning for a possible investment decision in 2025.
The wind farm can be commissioned around 2028 if everything goes according to plan. On the Danish side of Kriegers Flak, Vattenfall has already commissioned Denmark’s largest wind farm. On the German side, there has been a wind farm in operation since 2015.
