Germany eyes new offshore wind farms dedicated to green hydrogen production

https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/germany-eyes-new-offshore-wind-farms-dedicated-to-green-hydrogen-production/2-1-748198

by based2 • 6 years ago

93 119 6 years ago

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AtlasBarfed3• 6 years ago

All analyses of hydrogen I've read from EROEI conclude that it is more economically and thermodynamically efficient to direct power to the grid and send it to batteries.

It always seems anything this is advertised it is the fossil fuel industry trying to prop up a power generation system that will use fossil fuels, and window dressed/greenwashed by a small fraction of alt energy.

"Green Hydrogen" smells like "Clean Coal" to me.

ReptileMan• 6 years ago

There is more to a national power system than EROEI. If hydrogen is more versatile and useful it will have advantages even if it's EROEI is lower - lets say powering remote places or powering equipment for which battery powered is not an option, but fuel cells are.

AtlasBarfed3• 6 years ago

Hydrogen is difficult to transport: it leaks out of everything, it's a gas that needs to be liquified or compressed, and it is flammable.

I get that grid lines don't appear out of thin air, especially in seas/oceans.

Too bad microwave transmission cooks wildlife and humans.

imtringued2• 6 years ago

You're completely right but the challenge is sending the electricity from the north of Germany to the south. The construction of new transmission lines is being delayed. Generating hydrogen for use in the steel industry could be one way to take advantage of the excess energy. Long term energy storage and load following could be implemented by storing the hydrogen and burning it in natural gas plants. This is strictly necessary to increase the renewable share past 80%.

ben_bai6• 6 years ago

Absolutely, a lot of those wind turbines in the north sea are still not connected to the power grid because of missing infrastructure. They need to be turned by diesel generators, to not corrode. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-offshore... If they were connected there is still the problem of missing north-south transmission line.

So converting wind energy into hydrogen and using it for industry, in cars, or blending it into the natural gas pipelines is a "ok" idea. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/blending...

Gravityloss• 6 years ago

You have other uses for hydrogen than using it to produce electricity: You can use it as the reducing gas in steel making. Right now coal is used.

ben_w• 6 years ago

It might well be cheaper when starting from scratch, but it’s also useful to be able to keep using existing equipment that has been built to burn gases. I don’t know how useful — it’s certainly possible it’s better to build batteries than to e.g. make hydrogen, turn that hydrogen into methane, and use that methane in existing gas plants, but I can also believe the hydrogen route might scale up faster than batteries and therefore be a decent stop-gap measure while we build enough battery-building factories.

Plus it’s always a good strategic idea to not have a single point of failure in the event of e.g. an export ban of some important input to the battery manufacture from some country you have a trade dispute with.

reitzensteinm• 6 years ago

I've always assumed hydrogen would end up having a place as a spillover. Renewable + battery systems will need to be overbuilt for the worst parts of the year, so in the average case there's going to be an excess.

You have to do something with this power, and hydrogen allows you to store a lot of energy very cheaply at poor efficiency, perhaps for heating as gas is used today. In the summer, the excess could be used to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

manfredo3• 6 years ago

For thermodynamic efficiency, yes, batteries are better. But they're not available at anywhere near the levels required. The global battery production capacity is at just under 300GWh per year. By comparison, the US's night-time energy consumption is ~4-5TWh. Even if we stopped producing electronics, electric cars, any any other battery product and directed the entirety of the global battery production supply to grid storage, it'd still take the US over a decade at the current production levels. And if we're trying to make the globe carbon free, you're operating on levels of demand that won't be met for the better part of a century.

greglindahl• 6 years ago

Why are you assuming that we don't know how to build more battery factories? And does the wind not blow at night?

new_realist• 6 years ago

Batteries are ludicrously expensive for long term energy storage, and costs don’t scale sublinearly.

xxgreg3• 6 years ago

Yes - the article states that electricity is more efficiently used directly.

Hydrogen is valuable for other processes such producing steel, high temperature heat, and chemicals.

German industry already uses large amounts of hydrogen produced from fossil methane. The first step will be to replace this with renewable hydrogen.

Interesting fact: Germany has a few 100km of hydrogen pipelines which have been in operation since the 1930s.

twic2• 6 years ago

America has 2600 km of hydrogen pipelines:

https://hydrogeneurope.eu/hydrogen-transport-distribution#PI...

AtlasBarfed3• 6 years ago

Can't hydrogen from methane be produced and the resulting carbon/CO2 effectively sequestered at production point?

sgt101• 6 years ago

It would be better if Germany focused on getting rid of the lignate coal in its domestic power supply. I believe 1/3 of German electricity is generated this way.

One option would be build nuclear.

melling• 6 years ago

They are shutting down their nuclear power.

Faaak• 6 years ago

Exactly ! If the problem is Climate Change (and thus CO_2 production), why would you, in your sane mind, shut down nuclear power ? It's the best method to produce electricity with the less grams of CO2 per kwh..

kseistrup• 6 years ago

Nuclear power is too expensive compared to solar and wind power these days.

steeve• 6 years ago

Not until you factor in energy storage, at which point it’s far more expensive, and carbon intensive.

spenrose4• 6 years ago

The earliest and cheapest we will get new nuclear at low-gigawatt scale, according to the people building it, is in 10 years at which time if everything goes right the cost will have fallen to $65/MWh. Today we can deploy on-shore wind and solar at ~$30/MWh, and generate hydrogen with surplus per the article. Here is a thread citing nuclear industry advocates for building new nuclear power on the state of the efforts:

[$65/MWh, end of thread] https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1224019148562321408 [start, focusing on China's nuclear buildout] https://twitter.com/sampenrose/status/1162772916125126656

bathtub365• 6 years ago

What are the ecological ramifications of turning seawater into hydrogen? Are we depleting the total amount of water on the planet? I realize the scale that it’s happening at is probably relatively small, but I’m curious.

ben_bai6• 6 years ago

The scale is way too small for it to matter. Also burning hydrogen you get water as exhaust. So it's a closed loop.

unishark• 6 years ago

Also burning hydrogen you get water as exhaust.

Indeed the word Hydrogen is Latin for water producing. So the Latin for "hydrogen producing" would presumably be Hydrogengen.

elric• 6 years ago

The scale is way too small for it to matter.

I suspect that's what people thought when they began burning oil and gas for energy...

I don't remember the source, nor can I vouch for the veracity, but I remember reading an article that worked out what would happen if all cars ran on hydrogen. IIRC it had a significant impact on local weather conditions in cities.

unchocked2• 6 years ago

Hydrogen producing wind farms could be located far offshore without having to tie into the grid. Hydrogen is a great medium for long-term energy storage and is mostly compatible with existing natural gas infrastructure.

toomuchtodo• 6 years ago

Natural gas pipelines do not handle embrittlement from H well.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245232161...

jussij2• 6 years ago

There are work arounds on their way:

Ammonia—one nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms—may not seem like an ideal fuel: The chemical, used in household cleaners, smells foul and is toxic. But its energy density by volume is nearly double that of liquid hydrogen—its primary competitor as a green alternative fuel—and it is easier to ship and distribute. "You can store it, ship it, burn it, and convert it back into hydrogen and nitrogen," says Tim Hughes, an energy storage researcher with manufacturing giant Siemens in Oxford, U.K. "In many ways, it's ideal."

More details:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fu...

xxgreg3• 6 years ago

Many European gas systems were designed for town gas, produced from coal. This has a significant hydrogen component. So these systems can accommodate something like 15% hydrogen.

There are also a number of existing hydrogen pipelines in operation. One of which was first built in the the 30s.

unchocked2• 6 years ago

Hydrogen embrittlement isn’t the bogeyman it’s made to be, especially for mass-insensitive applications.

Steel fatigues faster, but predictably so. Ultimately the pipes themselves are replaced with thicker material, but it can be done incrementally and along existing right of way.

nickik• 6 years ago

Hydrogen producing wind farms could be located far offshore without having to tie into the grid.

While true in theory the primary reason to do this is to use access production from current wind plants.

There very slim chance you beat

Hydrogen is a great medium for long-term energy storage

Really not that great.

is mostly compatible with existing natural gas infrastructure.

Not really true either. There are work arounds but even if those work, changing the infrastructure is still a big task.

afarrell• 6 years ago

Is there any chemical process which could produce methane from CO2 and water instead?

Hydrogen is hard to store.

Nasrudith• 6 years ago

I recall hearing about navy peojwvrs to use reactor power and sea water to produce diesel for easier logistics. Less per Carbon density but a bit safer and easier to work with.

jcims• 6 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction

Still need to generate the hydrogen but you don’t need to store it.

hannob• 6 years ago

There kinda is, it's a two-step process: First you generate hydrogen and then methane out of hydrogen and CO2.

Problem is: Turning electricity into Hydrogen is inefficient, turning it into Methane is extra inefficient.

aaron695• 6 years ago

The hydrogen will not be 'created' offshore.

It's just a wind farm that transports electricity to shore which then through regulations has to be turn to hydrogen.

Right?

The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy?

I get for hydrogen production the power doesn't have to be as clean so you might get some gains there. But I assume they will not be significant to the over all process.

Like this example which is still on the grid as you'd expect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhm6S3Gs1Q

jcfrei• 6 years ago

The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy?

I get that impression too. The widespread usage of gasoline for passenger cars has created lots of jobs: Driving trucks for gasoline transportation, maintaining pumping equipment, gas station attendants, etc. If these jobs disappear due to a switch to electric vehicles in addition to the jobs lost due to the lower maintenance costs of electric cars then it seems reasonable to assume that some companies or organizations will try to maintain the current infrastructure. Even if it requires a switch to hydrogen.

craftinator• 6 years ago

Still way more expensive per megawatt than nuclear... Probably higher death toll as well.

leptoniscool• 6 years ago

Here's a map of the hydrogen fuel stations in the US: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/...

It looks like this is only in California. Is there a lack of demand from other areas of the country?

qchris• 6 years ago

For a lot of countries in the world, discussion of a hydrogen economy at any scale seems to be a bit of a hard sell. Barring sources like steam methane reformation from landfill-reclaimed methane, it's stuck between not being nearly as portable due to hydrogen embrittlement of storage container materials and ease of leak because of the small molecular size as traditional fossil fuels (albeit less C02 intensive), but a fair bit less efficient overall than just directly using the electricity.

That said, Germany's somewhat unique situation with regard to limited natural capacity for renewable energy means that that, in an argument for any degree of national energy independence, hydrogen could make sense if they can maintain some control the means of production and export.

The mention of using hydrogen in heavy industry is also interesting, and aligns with what I think of as a realistic stance. I used to work in the R&D section of a hydrogen fuel cell OEM, and one of the primary applications of hydrogen vs. batteries is in exactly the area stated: things that need quite a bit of consistent power generation, like buses or cranes or forklifts. Areas where recharge rate and up-time are really important, since available voltage doesn't drop with remaining energy capacity (you have the some available voltage until you stop supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell) and tanks can be refilled or swapped out more quickly than batteries.

I think it's also worth noting, that at least as far as I know, the tech for that sort of thing isn't years and years away on the energy-conversion side. The manufacturing capacity isn't exactly at scale yet, but because of the work put in by giants like Toyota and for specialty industries like refrigerated warehouses, I'd put the maturity of the fuel cells themselves closer to a TRL-7 or -8 than a TRL-2 or -3. It at least makes expectations seem more realistic than if the ministries were to say, "Well, we'll just hydrogen all the things!"

xxgreg3• 6 years ago

There is already a lot hydrogen use by German industry. Including a 240km pipeline built and in operation since the 30s.

The first step will be replacing hydrogen from fossil sources with renewable. This also provides industry which cannot be electrified a path to low carbon emissions.

jillesvangurp• 6 years ago

One thing that often comes up with clean energy solutions is the fluctuations in capacity. In the minds of some this translates into a "OMG we need so much battery to survive the post apocalyptic circumstances that will surely make wind + solar insufficient". However in the real world, you can also address fluctuations by simply having over capacity.

If e.g. wind is half the cost of other solutions, you can install 2x the capacity that you need so that you still get 100% of what you need when winds drop by 2x. That of course creates the interesting problem of what to do with the extra energy that you don't need under normal circumstances. One solution is to simply transport it around by cable to places that have under capacity but if everyone puts over capacity in place, that's not going to soak up all the over capacity.

Solar has the same challenge. Having barely enough production + batteries can work. But when prices for solar + wind continue to drop you can start thinking about installing 2x, 3x or even 10x the capacity that is needed. That then creates a challenge of how to utilize that over capacity. This is not a problem but a huge economic opportunity.

Hydrogen is one of several ways to store energy and if we nail cheap & clean mass production, it becomes a very useful source of energy for all sorts of things. The German industry (i.e. Siemens + car manufacturers) are keenly interested in making that happen because there's going to be a world wide demand for components for all of this and that kind of is something they are good at. So, there's a very rational reason for bootstrapping the hydrogen economy like this in Germany.

Hypx7• 6 years ago

Hydrogen is one of several ways to store energy and if we nail cheap & clean mass production, it becomes a very useful source of energy for all sorts of things.

If we’re talking about long-term storage, hydrogen is nearly the only option available. Alternatives would be ideas like synfuels or ammonia (which both use H2 as a feedstock). You need the high energy densities of chemical fuels for this purpose. Something that other ideas, like pumped hydro or compress air, sorely lack.

edejong2• 6 years ago

I am not an expert on the hydrogen economy, but I've consistently seen a couple of important road blocks.

First, like you mention, the transport and storage of hydrogen is complicated due to hydrogen embrittlement of iron and steel. The Dutch gas companies seem to be very optimistic using the existing high-pressure pipe system crossing large parts of the Netherlands to transport H2. Question is whether long-term embrittlement might occur? how do we know? What about the smaller pipes leading to homes? The rate of embrittlement is quoted to be ten times higher. Do you have any wise words to add to this? Do you share my concerns?

2. Risk of hydrogen build-up in enclosures. Hydrogen's lighter than air property is often cited as a benefit, as it can evaporate into the atmosphere. However, in an enclosure, it might delay detection, since it is captured in the top of the building and presence might not be picked up with added odors. Some buildings open mostly at the bottom, such as distribution centers. Is this an unknown risk? We don't know, because it is actively being researched.

3. For powering vehicles, there is tremendous loss of energy from renewables due to transfer of energy and transport of gas. I think I've seen cited 30% efficiency.

4. There is an actual, continuous demand for hydrogen. However, for green hydrogen, we will need near 100% utilization of the electrolysis plants. That contradicts the premise to use excess energy from renewables to produce hydrogen. The electrolysis plants would shut down when generated electricity can be used to power industry motors directly.

5. Subsidizing hydrogen initiatives pulls subsidy away from Photo Voltaics, better electricity distribution and battery technology.

6. Long-term, we will end up with two infrastructures, with all the fixed costs associated. That might be more expensive than one (less efficient) infrastructure.

So, all in all, I am mildly skeptical on mass-scale hydrogen solutions. Perhaps you can make me more optimistic?

raxxorrax2• 6 years ago

Risk of hydrogen build-up in enclosures.

Allowing smoking in buildings again would stop this build-up.

Hypx7• 6 years ago

1) Main strategy to avoid this is to just coat pipelines with plastic or make them out of plastic. Not all metals are equally susceptible to this process, and newer alloys are being developed that can strongly resist this phenomenon. While it is a problem, it is a solvable problem.

2) What I’ve read is that they’ll build hydrogen sensors and alarms for this.

3) This is hugely overstated for two reasons. One, just because an process contains inefficiencies, doesn’t mean the entire process is invalid. After all, gasoline powered cars throw away more than 80% of the original energy found in crude oil as waste heat. Fuel cell cars may waste more energy than battery cars, but it is less than ICEVs. Also, you do want to have excess heat sometimes.

Second, most of the sources of inefficient are solvable and/or were wildly exaggerated to begin will. Many arguments against hydrogen seem to cite some 20-30 year old source, and had some extremely pessimistic projections like hydrogen tanks leaking 20% or more of their fuel. Most of these projections haven’t been borne out.

4) Why do electrolysis plants need to run at 100% utilization rates? In a renewable world, almost nothing will have 100% utilization. This is not really a big deal since electrolyzers can be turned on and off quickly.

5) That’s true of any subsidy. One of the biggest complaints of the subsidy regime is how wasteful it is, and how poorly optimized it is for reducing GHG emissions. It will be almost a relief if hydrogen gets of those subsidies, since right now it is an important necessary technology that’s getting close to zero subsidies.

6) We don’t really need two overlapping infrastructures. Limit each infrastructure to where it is most effectively used.

raxxorrax2• 6 years ago

I think if we solve the hydrogen storage problem, it would also be the future for vehicles. Batteries just aren't going to cut it in the long run because of their limited power, limited charge cycles and heavy weight. I see those in a stationary role to provide capacity.

Sure, hydrogen diffuses through everything, but if we have a clean energy source that can be scaled, efficiency of conversion and loss from storage becomes secondary. Especially since fuel for cars is a short term form of storage. And it provides all the advantages fossil fuels currently have for this application.

That said, current technology doesn't provide adequate solutions for fuel cell cars en masse. Refueling is hard, fuel cells degrade quickly like batteries, distributing hydrogen is pretty hard and current production not environment friendly at all. There are some cars on the market with impressive performance, but the price is quite steep

But on the other hand, we also don't have infrastructure for batteries on scale. Imaging what the power supply for a "gas" stations on frequented roads has to look like if suddenly everyone had a electric vehicle. You would also need a lot more "buffer space". That is currently not possible to implement for any region with a large traffic density.

woodandsteel2• 6 years ago

think if we solve the hydrogen storage problem, it would also be the future for vehicles. Batteries just aren't going to cut it in the long run because of their limited power, limited charge cycles and heavy weight.

That was true in the past but not any more. Battery powered ev's, especially the best ones, are good enough for a large proportion of use cases, and are steadily getting better. And the infrastructure situation is also getting better at a rapid pace. To put in another way, the proportion of use cases where hydrogen fuel cells, if they ever become practical, would be superior, is shrinking every year.

usrusr7• 6 years ago

Barring sources like steam methane reformation from landfill-reclaimed methane

You got this reversed: as a general purpose energy carrier, methane is far more useful than hydrogen. Because it is so much easier to handle (as you said), and because so much infrastructure is already in place.

But you can't produce methane from surplus electricity without having hydrogen as an intermediate step. All this talk about hydrogen is just about skipping the inefficient methanization step. Methanization would also have a hard scaling limit in how much concentrated CO2 can be captured. Ambient concentrations are far too low for methanization and carbon fuel applications like aerospace won't ever be able to capture.

mhandley• 6 years ago

Right now, the UK is getting 7% of its electricity from burning biomass, primarily woodchips. CO2 capture there seems eminently doable, as a source for methanization of hydrogen.

It seems unlikely that hydrogen will be a viable fuel for commercial aircraft, given the difficulties of keeping hydrogen liquid or storing it compressed without excessive mass. Liquified natural gas (primarily methane) is however a viable fuel: https://www.wired.com/2012/03/boeing-freezes-design-with-liq...

If we can generate hydrogen from wind and capture CO2 from biomass, and use them to generate methane, this seems a viable way to power aviation going forwards. For most other things, batteries or direct hydrogen use seem viable, but aviation is hard.

jokoon• 6 years ago

I've also read that hydrogen is some kind of way for the petro-industry to maintain its infrastructure and business, since it's a pseudo-green energy which can be advertised as an alternative to batteries.

Steam reforming is not green. Electrolysis is great but it's less efficient, although it would work with nuclear energy since nuclear can give energy in abundance.

There are 2 sides to reduce the carbon footprint: nuclear energy and energy sobriety.

solarkraft2• 6 years ago

Oh, hydrogen. Do the cost savings in building and transmission infrastructure really outweigh the costs of building hydrogen processing and storing infrastructure and the vast losses encountered therein?

Germany eyes new offshore wind farms dedicated to green hydrogen production

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