Specific Challenge:
Over the past years, electrolysers have demonstrated their high flexibility and potential to deliver grid balancing services as a flexible load. Due to its variable character and increasing penetration, the integration of wind energy is becoming more challenging in Europe especially in weak power grids.
Locating an electrolyser inside the fence of a wind park presents potentially many advantages such as the smoothing of the power output (feed-in) of the wind park, the optimization of power management between the two technologies, the avoidance of (transmission and distribution) grid costs on the power used by the electrolyser, a clear renewable character of the hydrogen produced from wind power, the possibility to develop new operating strategies in order to maximize the energy production from wind turbines (curtailment avoidance) and to experiment new types of combined grid services.
The specific challenge of the topic is to achieve a full and efficient integration between the wind power generation systems and the capacity of hydrogen generation through electrolysers in a new and highly integrated layout.
Scope:
This topic aims at demonstrating an electrolyser in combination with an existing wind turbine or wind park. The electrolyser should be located inside the fence of a wind park and deliver balancing services through improved grid stabilising features of the wind turbine – electrolyser integration upstream of the wind park transformer.
Within the project, the smart energy management system and the necessary controls will be developed to operate the wind park and the electrolyser in the most optimal way, exploiting technical and economical synergies. The project should include the development of an advanced control system with power set points to combine the volatility of the wind park and the flexibility of the electrolyser. This control system should also consider economical parameters such as the provision of grid balancing services, the hydrogen demand profile for the selected application and the optimization of the economics of the whole plant (wind power sale and hydrogen sale).
The project should further demonstrate:
A significant part of the hydrogen produced during the project should be valorised, sold for example to a customer (industrial or mobility), injected in a natural gas or hydrogen grid or re-electrified. The downstream costs associated with the hydrogen use (outside the fence) are not considered eligible for funding under this topic by the FCH JU.
Furthermore, the project shall provide:
The technology should be moved from TRL 4 to TRL 6 with respect to the balance of plant and the system integration with the wind park. The consortium should include at least a wind farm operator, an electrolyser manufacturer and a grid operator.
International collaboration in this field is highly encouraged, especially with IPHE members.
Any safety-related event that may occur during execution of the project shall be reported to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), which manages the European hydrogen safety reference database, HIAD (dedicated mailbox JRC-PTT-H2SAFETY@ec.europa.eu).
The maximum FCH 2 JU contribution that may be requested is EUR 5 million per project. This is an eligibility criterion – proposals requesting FCH 2 JU contributions above this amount will not be evaluated.
A maximum of 1 project may be funded under this topic
Expected duration: 4 years
Expected Impact:
Cross-cutting Priorities:
International cooperation
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