Ørsted, along with ITM Power and Element Energy, has won funding from the UK Government for a green hydrogen project. The Gigastack feasibility study, led by ITM Power, is a six-month project to investigate the possible delivery of bulk, low-cost and zero-carbon hydrogen.
The funding has been secured as part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Hydrogen Supply Competition, which analyzes ways to boost the development of low carbon hydrogen supply solutions.
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The project aims to identify opportunities to reduce the cost of producing hydrogen through the process of electrolysis, making it a more viable option for the UK’s energy system and for decarbonising industry.
Commenting on the development, Anders Christian Nordstrøm, Vice President for Hydrogen at Ørsted, noted that by combining renewable power with flexible green hydrogen production is key for decarbonising energy systems across Europe and ‘ultimately creating a world that runs entirely on green energy.’
Hydrogen production by electrolysis is a technology with great potential and this Gigastack project is an important step forward as we look to reduce costs and make green hydrogen a viable solution for the energy transformation. It is great to have this support from the UK Government for the project
In addition, Dr Graham Cooley, CEO, ITM Power, explained that the Gigastack Project seeks to significantly lower the cost of producing green hydrogen by scaling the individual electrolyser stacks to 5MW and the production process to 1 GW (1,000 MW) of electrolysis capacity per annum.
This project will help UK’s efforts to roll out hydrogen at scale by the 2030s, which is considered a crucial step towards the end of the UK’s contribution to global warming, Climate Change Minister Lord Duncan said.
Specifically, the project will investigate:
- Development of a new 5 megawatt (MW) stack design to reduce material costs;
- A new semi-automated manufacturing facility with an electrolyser capacity of up to 1 gigawatt a year to increase throughput and decrease labour costs;
- Deployment of large scale and low cost +100MW electrolyser systems using a number of the 5MW units;
- Innovations in the operation of these large electrolysers to enable them to operate with large scale renewable energy.
