Siemens Gamesa and Siemens Energy have this week announced they'd work together on wind-to-hydrogen projects to help decarbonize the economy "to solve the climate crisis."
The companies said they were contributing with their developments to an innovative solution that fully integrates an electrolyzer into an offshore wind turbine as a single synchronized system to directly produce green hydrogen.
The companies intend to provide a full-scale offshore demonstration of the solution by 2025/2026.
“Our more than 30 years of experience and leadership in the offshore wind industry, coupled with Siemens Energy’s expertise in electrolyzers, brings together brilliant minds and cutting-edge technologies to address the climate crisis. Our wind turbines play a huge role in the decarbonization of the global energy system, and the potential of wind to hydrogen means that we can do this for hard-to-abate industries too. It makes me very proud that our people are a part of shaping a greener future,” said Andreas Nauen, Siemens Gamesa CEO.
World's largest offshore wind turbine
Over a time frame of five years, Siemens Gamesa plans to invest EUR 80 million and Siemens Energy is targeting to invest EUR 40 million in the developments.
Siemens Gamesa will adapt its development of what is expected to be one of the world’s most powerful offshore wind turbines, the SG 14-222 DD offshore wind turbine, to integrate an electrolysis system into the turbine’s operations.
The company says that electric losses are reduced to a minimum, "while a modular approach ensures a reliable and efficient operational set-up for a scalable offshore wind-to-hydrogen solution."
Siemens Energy will develop a new electrolysis product to meet the needs of the harsh maritime offshore environment and be in sync with the wind turbine.
"The ultimate fully integrated offshore wind-to-hydrogen solution will produce green hydrogen using an electrolyzer array located at the base of the offshore wind turbine tower, blazing a trail towards offshore hydrogen production," Siemens Gamesa said,
"The solution will lower the cost of hydrogen by being able to run off grid, opening up more and better wind sites. The companies’ developments will serve as a test bed for making large-scale, cost-efficient hydrogen production a reality and will prove the feasibility of reliable, effective implementation of wind turbines in systems for producing hydrogen from renewable energy," Siemens Gamesa added.
Siemens Gamesa said the developments are part of the H2Mare initiative which is a lighthouse project likely to be supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research ideas competition "Hydrogen Republic of Germany".
The H2mare initiative under the consortium lead of Siemens Energy is a modular project consisting of multiple sub-projects to which more than 30 partners from industry, institutes and academia are contributing. Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa will contribute to the H2Mare initiative with their own developments in separate modular building blocks.
Currently, 80 million tons of hydrogen are produced each year and production is expected to increase by about 20 million tons by 2030. Just 1% of that hydrogen is currently generated from green energy sources.
The bulk is obtained from natural gas and coal, emitting 830 million tons of CO2 per year, more than the entire nation of Germany or the global shipping industry.
According to Siemens Gamesa, replacing this current polluting consumption would require 820 GW of wind generating capacity, 26% more than the current global installed wind capacity.
"Looking further ahead, many studies suggest that by 2050 production will have grown to about 500 million tons with a significant shift to green hydrogen. The expected growth will require between 1,000 GW and 4,000 GW of renewable capacity by 2050 to meet demand, which highlights the vast potential for growth in wind power," Siemens Gamesa said.