Under the direction of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, a consortium made up of research institutes, businesses and associations has published a hydrogen potential atlas as part of the PoWerD project. This atlas identifies and evaluates suitable locations for the production of green hydrogen by means of electrolysis. The hydrogen will then go on to be used in various industry sectors and in transport.
Hydrogen is a crucial component for comprehensively coupling the electricity, heat, transport and industry sectors. As a chemical energy source that is easy to transport, it helps to keep the power grid stable and replaces fossil fuels and chemicals. Electrolysis has therefore become a key technology for the energy revolution, which is why the EU Hydrogen Strategy aspires to install electrolysers with an output of at least 40 gigawatts by 2030.
But where does it make the most sense to use electrolysers in Germany? The recently published PoWerD Potential Atlas highlights suitable locations scattered across the country – under a variety of scenarios and drawing on various business models. The atlas is available for use by project planners, energy suppliers, local government and public authorities for the identification of suitable facility sites. It highlights various key figures pertaining to the locations which can indicate the direction of travel for investment decisions. Besides electrolysis capacity, these indicators also include the costs of acquiring and providing hydrogen, potentials for the use of renewable energies for electrolysis, and the annual energy requirement.
The project partners identified the locations according to potentials for the industry hydrogen requirement (for example, chemical and steel industry) and transport (especially buses and trains). In addition, they examined the regional availability of renewable energies and the use of the oxygen and heat that are the co-products of electrolysis alongside hydrogen. The oxygen can be utilised by wastewater treatment companies, while the waste heat can be incorporated into heating networks and used for industrial processes. “Using the co-products heat and oxygen in local government waste water treatment facilities helps to keep the whole system sustainable: wastewater treatment facilities reduce their energy consumption by using electrolysis oxygen during the purification process, thus improving the ecological footprint of their purification processes,” reports Prof. Heidrun Steinmetz from the Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery Department at the RPTU in Kaiserslautern.
Likely costs of transportation and the hydrogen compression necessary for that purpose are also considered among the turnover potentials of any identified electrolyser location. The future creation of a hydrogen infrastructure in the form of pipelines is also taken into account in the atlas, since that may make transport by lorry obsolete or at least reduce it. Furthermore, suitable locations for electrolysers on the power grid are also identified, to allow operation to counter shortages.
North German locations with cost benefits
A crucial factor for the cost-effective production of green hydrogen is the availability of renewable energies. Germany’s north exhibits clear benefits in terms of wind energy supply, while differences in solar radiation are less significant. “Therefore, suitable locations for larger electrolysers can be found on the electricity grid, especially in the north and particularly near offshore interconnection points,” explains Clara Büttner, subproject leader at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences. Electrolysis sites powered by northern German wind power therefore benefit from cost advantages.
The utilisation of co-products such as waste heat and oxygen was also able to reduce hydrogen costs in the business cases examined. These options are often feasible, but do not represent decisive factors in site selection. In contrast, the future German hydrogen core network (pipelines) plays a central role in site evaluation. Electrolysers are ideal “on sites of former fossil-fuel power plants or industrial parks that have a well-developed infrastructure,” says Jochen Behrens, project manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. “The atlas demonstrates that widespread potential arises primarily through the use of hydrogen in local public transport,” adds Klaus Stolzenburg, managing director of Planet Engineering and Consulting.
Source: Fraunhofer ISE
