GB£7.5m funding has been awarded for the second phase of a new renewable hydrogen project as part of the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Hydrogen Supply Competition.
The Gigastack project, led by ITM Power, Ørsted, Phillips 66 Limited and Element Energy, will show how renewable hydrogen derived from offshore wind can support the UK’s 2050 net-zero greenhouse gas emission target. ITM Power initially developed designs for a low-cost modular 5MW electrolyser ‘stack’. Phase two aims to demonstrate low-cost, zero-carbon hydrogen in the UK to industrial scale.
“Creating renewable hydrogen with offshore wind really has the potential to decarbonise industrial processes, and what is needed now is to scale up the electrolyser technology and bring the cost down,” said Anders Christian Nordstrøm, vice president for hydrogen at Ørsted.
FEED study
For the second phase of the project, the consortium will conduct a Front-End Engineering Design (‘FEED’) study on a 100MW electrolyser system using staged installations with a nominal capacity of 20MW.
The FEED study will detail the actual design of a hydrogen production system connected to a wind farm and industrial off-taker using ITM Power’s new generation of electrolyser stack technology, renewable energy directly from Ørsted’s Hornsea Two offshore wind farm, and with the resulting renewable hydrogen supplied to an industrial off-taker; Phillips 66 Limited’s Humber Refinery.
As part of the second phase, ITM Power will also install and trial both its next-generation electrolyser stack and the semi-automated manufacturing machines required for large-scale and high-volume manufacture of these new large low-cost stacks.
By Rebecca Jeffrey
