Hydrogen production: a new skill for offshore wind power development
Time：2022/5/18 10:34:27 Tag：Hydrogen production, green hydrogen,renewable energy
China has a long coastline and abundant Marine resources. With the growth of renewable energy utilization in recent years, the utilization of offshore wind power in China has increased year by year. According to statistics from the National Energy Administration, China's installed power generation capacity in 2021 was about 2.38 billion kilowatts, up 7.9 percent year on year. Among them, the installed wind power capacity was about 330 million kw, up 16.6% year on year.
In terms of Marine power industry, China's new grid-connected offshore wind power capacity will be 16.9 million kw in 2021, 5.5 times that of the previous year, ranking first in the world in cumulative installed capacity, according to the China Marine Economic Statistics Bulletin 2021. Continuous progress was made in research, development and demonstration of technologies for the development and utilization of ocean tidal and wave energy. The added value of the Marine power industry reached 32.9 billion yuan, an increase of 30.5 percent over last year.
According to the national medium - and long-term development plan, installed wind power capacity will exceed 200GW by the end of 2020 and 1000GW by the end of 2050. Curtailment is on the rise as wind power installations increase and large-scale wind farms gather to put extreme pressure on local power grids.
Offshore wind seeks a new outlet
As a new way of energy storage, wind power hydrogen production technology will be applied to reduce the imbalance of large-scale wind power generation and improve the utilization rate of wind power in wind farms.
The value of offshore wind power can be increased by producing hydrogen from wind, because regions with abundant offshore wind resources can produce green hydrogen directly, without the additional conversion cost of transporting the electricity generated to shore. Wind power, meanwhile, is an unlimited, free source of energy that can generate the electricity needed to produce green hydrogen.
This model offers a further advantage because the hydrogen produced on site can be transported through pipelines, which offer a greater economic advantage than the HVDC systems needed to deliver electricity. Pipelines are a more cost-effective option for transporting large amounts of energy over long distances.
According to the different sources of wind power, wind power hydrogen production technology can be divided into grid-connected wind power hydrogen production and off-grid wind power hydrogen production
· Grid-connected wind power hydrogen production means that wind turbines are connected to the power grid and electricity is obtained from the power grid. For example, electricity is obtained from the side of 35kV or 220kV power grid in the wind field and hydrogen is produced by water electrolysis, which is mainly applied to wind abandoning consumption and energy storage in large-scale wind farms.
· Off-grid wind power hydrogen production refers to that the electric energy generated by a single fan or multiple fans is directly provided to the electrolytic water hydrogen production equipment for hydrogen production without passing through the power grid, which is mainly applied to distributed hydrogen production or partially applied to fuel cell power generation and energy supply.
From the technical point of view, the randomness, instability and volatility of wind power are large, while hydroelectricity generation hydrogen equipment has high requirements on the stability of power quality. Frequent power fluctuations will affect the operation life of equipment and the purity quality of hydrogen. How to carry out effective electric energy matching and improve the utilization rate of hydrogen production equipment needs to be studied and discussed. In addition, the current high cost of hydrogen storage and transportation, including the safety of hydrogen storage and transportation, are bottlenecks restricting the development of hydrogen energy industry, and storage and transportation technology needs further research.
The reserves of wind energy in the deep sea area of China are more than three times that in the offshore area. The integrated development and utilization of offshore wind power, Marine pasture, offshore oil and gas, seawater desalination, hydrogen energy and energy storage can help improve the utilization efficiency of sea areas and enhance the overall effect of projects, which is an important development direction of offshore wind power.
The world's first offshore wind power hydrogen production project -- PosHYdon in the Netherlands
In early July 2019, Netherland-based Neptune Energy's Q13A-A offshore platform was selected as the world's first offshore wind hydrogen test site. The project, called PosHYdon, will integrate three Energy forms in the North Sea: offshore wind, offshore gas and hydrogen. The trial is being conducted by Nexstep, the Dutch Decommissioning and Reuse Association (DADR) and TNO, in collaboration with several Dutch energy industry companies.
Nepture Energy's Q13a platform, the first fully electrified platform in the Dutch North Sea, will be converted to hydrogen production at PosHYdon. Containerized hydrogen production facilities are small enough to fit most offshore platforms. The PosHYdon project aims to develop hydrogen production from offshore wind power, innovate the technology and apply it in the Netherlands. In the future, electrolysis equipment will be installed on other offshore platforms in the North Sea near offshore wind farms. Through the combination of hydrogen, natural gas, wind power three industries, to provide green energy for human society, to achieve energy transformation.
China's first offshore wind power hydrogen production project -- Qingdao Far-reaching Sea 2 million kW offshore wind power Integration Demonstration Wind Farm project
It is understood that Qingdao Far-reaching Sea 2 million kw offshore wind power integration demonstration wind farm project wind power part of the direct investment of more than 30 billion yuan, can drive the integration of wind farm and Marine ranch industry, wind power hydrogen production, wind power seawater desalination and equipment manufacturing and other related industries a total investment of more than 50 billion yuan. The project is 70 kilometers away from the blue Valley coastline, with a water depth of about 30 meters. The total construction capacity is 2 million kilowatts, and the annual wind power can reach 6 billion KWH after production, and the annual output value is 3 billion YUAN.
The project will be developed in two phases. In the first phase, the scale of the offshore wind farm will be about 1 million kW, and the pilot demonstration will be focused on the integration of offshore wind power and Marine pasture, floating fan foundation, long-distance offshore power transmission, residual electricity hydrogen production and seawater desalination, and the first set of new wind power equipment will be carried out. The second phase will be developed with a capacity of about 1 million kw. Based on the experimental results and experience of the demonstration project in the first phase, we will steadily promote the demonstration and application of innovative floating offshore wind turbines in deep and distant sea areas, and comprehensively carry out the integrated application of offshore wind power and Marine pastures and the application of new technologies and equipment. We will promote diversified integrated experiments and demonstration applications of offshore wind power + wave power, offshore wind power + hydrogen production and storage, offshore wind power + seawater desalination, offshore wind power + Marine chemical industry, offshore wind power + Marine scientific research, and build a world-class demonstration base for "offshore wind power +" integration projects.