Hydrogen plant proposals fail to blow away concerns over wind farm project

[jpak]

http://www.sundayherald.com/business/businessnews/display.var.2246075.0.hydrogen_plant_proposals_fail_to_blow_away_concerns_over_wind_farm_project.php

AN?AUSTRALIAN?RENEWABLES START-UP is hoping to deflect local opposition to a wind farm currently under consideration by North Ayrshire Council, by applying to build a hydrogen plant that would allow it to feed electricity into the grid even on calm days.

In a £60 million project in the 70,000-acre Clyde Muirshiel regional park, the Sydney-based firm Wind Hydrogen has patented a scheme for using wind power to produce hydrogen which can be stored and converted into electricity when there is no wind.

The company claims that the linked developments would overcome the problem of wind power intermittency, and if built would be the first such project in the world.

On a visit to Scotland in April, Wind Hydrogen's American chief executive Larry Podrasky said that solving intermittency would change the way that wind farms were perceived by electricity companies.

<more>

[Vincardog]

1. What are they going to do about the fact that making Hydrogen costs more energy than they can get

from hydrogen?

[jpak]

2. ugh - its a storage medium - like a battery - not an "energy source"

When production exceeds demand, they will store that energy as hydrogen and use fuel cells to produce juice when turbine output is reduced relative to demand.

[Vincardog]

3. according to your article the hydrogen has nothing to do with the wind farm

According to local campaigners, however, Wind Hydrogen is "misleading" affected communities by making a "fallacious" link between the wind farm and the hydrogen plant. They claim that the energy used to produce the hydrogen is not derived from the turbines and that the project therefore does not solve intermittency.

[jpak]

4. That's the fallacious argument of the wind farm opponents

The company clearly linked the H2 plant with the wind farm...

[Vincardog]

5. from your link to your article. They are independant and the Energy to creare Hydorgen is greater

the energy you get by burning it.

A spokesman for Wind Hydrogen said: "This project will contain the UK's first grid-connected commercially sized prototype hydrogen balancing facility. The wind farm will generate the required amount of electrical power required to power the hydrogen balancing facility. Excess electricity from the wind farm is being utilised through transfer via the grid to the hydrogen plant. "

[jpak]

6. ugh - read the OP

n/t

[eppur_se_muova]

8. In other words, it's less than 100% efficient.

That's all that statement says. Nothing in the real world is 100% efficient. Engineers deal with it by building a little extra capacity.

[kristopher]

7. Hmmmm

Grid integration costs money. If you want to put up a wind farm, then someone is going to have to provide power to fill in the gaps when it doesn't generate because of lack of wind.

The article is about Australia, so the specifics may be different there, for example if the farm is in a remote location and is serving load there, the available standby generation may not be sufficient to handle the increased variability in supply that the wind farm would cause.
In the US, there is a lot of extra generating capacity sitting idle most of the time, so there is no need to install additional standby generating capacity specifically for a wind farm. It is much cheaper just to buy it from natural gas plants already in place.
The average cost is between 5-10 dollars/Mwh depending on the specific configuration of the area of the wind farm.

What the hydrogen setup would do is allow the capture of "spilled wind", that is electricity produced when the wind is blowing but when it isn't needed by the grid. If spilled wind is the source of energy for another entity that operates a storage facility, then that electricity can be purchased by the storage business for a low cost - otherwise the energy is wasted. That stored energy, in turn can then be sold as any other source of power into the grid. By means of long term contracts the two different entities (wind and H storage) are able to meet each other's needs and potentially increase each other's profitability. It is complex, so I may not have captured all the details, but I think you get the idea.

Let's say the wind farm could buy support on the grid for $7 a Mwh. To offset that he sells the "spilled wind" to the H plant for $2 Mwh. Then, when needed the windfarm buys it back for $6 Mwh as support.

Then say the H plant can buy energy off the grid during offpeak periods for $4 Mwh. Instead he buys the spilled wind for $2 Mwh. Then he sells it for the $ mentioned. The H plant is more profitable than it would otherwise be because of the less expensive spilled wind. If there is excess storage capacity to the wind plant' needs, that electricity can be sold on the electric market for much higher prices than the numbers I've listed. In the area where I live it isn't unusual for spot market rates in the summertime peaks to hit $125 Mwh. I have no idea of the Australian market.

In this case, high compression and transport of the H isn't required, so it is MUCH more efficient than most applications of H would indicate.

Fuel cells are, however, a pretty expensive way to make electricity.

[Dead_Parrot]

9. (Pssst...)

(...the article is about Scotland, not Australia ;)).

One key question is the energy capacity of the storage plant (:shrug:), another is what method they'll be using to back-up a 48MW wind farm with a 5MW hydrogen plant (my guess is "magic").

Tricky to put sums behind it without knowing those answers.