HDF Proposes 1,500MW of Photo voltaic PV Mixed With 3,500MWh of Inexperienced Hydrogen Storage

All over the world, there’s a big fleet of coal energy vegetation that may attain the top of their lifecycle over the subsequent couple of a long time. South Africa is certainly one of locations the place a fleet of over 20GW is about to be decommissioned over the subsequent couple of decade. As a way to guarantee a simply transition that appears into how the native communities in these coal ecosystems is not going to be disenfranchised, leaving ghost cities, and so on., a number of proposals have been mentioned by stakeholders in numerous locations around the globe.

A few of these proposals embody:

1. changing these coal vegetation with Small Modular Reactors, leveraging the prevailing grid infrastructure
2. putting in massive utility-scale battery storage to help the mixing of variable renewables in addition to different grid help providers, and utilizing the big tracts of land round these areas to put in photo voltaic PV. This photo voltaic PV can then additionally leverage the prevailing grid infrastructure to feed the a lot wanted clear electrical energy into the grid. This massive-scale photo voltaic will also be funded by unbiased energy producers through non-public off-taker agreements with excessive vitality shoppers via electrical energy wheeling preparations.

HDF Power (Hydrogène de France), a developer of large-scale inexperienced hydrogen infrastructure and producer of high-power gasoline cells, now needs so as to add a inexperienced hydrogen ecosystem to this mixture of options. South Africa’s Mpumalanga province has been the key middle of South Africa’s electrical energy technology combine on account of its coal sources. HDF has secured 1,782 hectares inside South Africa’s nationwide energy utility firm Eskom’s Land Lease Tender to develop Inexperienced Hydrogen baseload energy vegetation in Mpumalanga. HDF says these vegetation have the potential to develop to turn into the biggest inexperienced hydrogen vegetation in he world. The plans contain establishing throughout numerous websites across the Tutuka and Majuba coal energy stations.

Earlier than we get into the small print of the proposed Mpumalanga mission, here’s a look a how a few of HDF’s vegetation work. HDF has developed two fashions for its multi-megawatt energy vegetation:

• (POWER TO POWER): Agency, dispatchable, and secure electrical energy technology from an intermittent renewable supply utilizing domestically produced inexperienced hydrogen
• (GAS TO POWER): On-demand energy technology from inexperienced hydrogen from gasoline transportation networks or some other inexperienced hydrogen tasks domestically applied

These  kinds of tasks are likely to have a mixture of photo voltaic PV panels, electrolyzers for inexperienced hydrogen manufacturing and storage, excessive energy gasoline cells, and lithium-ion batteries. That is how the techniques work:

1. The Photo voltaic Energy Plant generates the carbon-free main supply of electrical energy for the Renewstable® Energy Plant when the solar is shining.
2. The Battery Storage supplies the top of the day peak energy and, together with the hydrogen storage, ensures the soundness of the electrical energy service.

The long-term H2 Storage System:

3. ​converts electrical energy from the photovoltaic park into hydrogen utilizing an electrolyzer system in the course of the day, turning water and oxygen into hydrogen
4. shops the gaseous hydrogen produced in horizontal metallic tanks
5. produces electrical energy from saved hydrogen utilizing a Hydrogen Gasoline Cell in the course of the night time

HDF says its Renewstable® energy plant is designed to supply clear baseload energy with important grid stabilizing providers in areas the place geothermal or hydropower shouldn’t be out there. The plant harnesses the solar’s vitality via a photo voltaic park and/or wind vitality through a wind farm, producing and storing inexperienced hydrogen via water electrolysis, and changing it to electrical energy on-demand, 24 hours a day, utilizing HDF’s proprietary multi-megawatt gasoline cells.

For the proposed Mpumalanga mission, the setup can have 1,500MW of photo voltaic PV mixed with 3,500MWh of hydrogen storage. HDF’s Dexter King shared this replace through his LinkedIn. This setup is envisioned to offer about 500MW to the grid on a 24/7 foundation. HDF says this 500MW is equal to half a stage of load-shedding.

It’s an fascinating idea, What are your ideas on this method to repurpose the areas round outdated coal energy vegetation with inexperienced hydrogen and storage? Tell us within the feedback part.

Picture courtesy of HDF