Published 01/15/2021

Siemens Gamesa, Siemens Energy partner for offshore green hydrogen production acceleration

Five-year project is the first major step to develop an industrial-scale system capable of harvesting green hydrogen from offshore wind.

Wind/Energy

Edited by: Grace Stubbins

Senior Managing Editor, CompositesWorld and Products Finishing

The innovative solution will fully integrate an electrolyzer — a system that uses electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen in a process called electrolysis — into an offshore wind turbine as a single synchronized system to directly produce green hydrogen. The companies intend to provide a full-scale offshore demonstration of the solution by 2025/2026. Further, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research announced that the developments can be implemented as part of the ideas competition “Hydrogen Republic of Germany.”

“Our more than 30 years of experience and leadership in the offshore wind industry, coupled with Siemens Energy’s expertise in electrolyzers, brings together brilliant minds and cutting-edge technologies to address the climate crisis,” says Andreas Nauen, Siemens Gamesa CEO. “Our wind turbines play a big role in the decarbonization of the global energy system, and the potential of wind to hydrogen means that we can do this for hard-to-abate industries, too. It makes me proud that our people are a part of shaping a greener future.”

Over a timeframe of five years, Siemens Gamesa plans to invest EUR €80 million and Siemens Energy is targeting to invest EUR €40 million in the developments. Siemens Gamesa says it will adapt development of its SG 14-222 DD offshore wind turbine to integrate an electrolysis system seamlessly into the turbine’s operations. By leveraging Siemens Gamesa’s knowledge and decades of experience with offshore wind, electric losses will reportedly be reduced to a minimum, while a modular approach ensures a reliable and efficient operational setup for a scalable offshore wind-to-hydrogen solution. Siemens Energy plans to develop a new electrolysis product to not only meet the needs of the harsh maritime offshore environment and to be in perfect sync with the wind turbine, but also to create a new competitive benchmark for green hydrogen.

According to Siemens Gamesa, the solution will ultimately lower the cost of hydrogen by being able to run off-the-grid, opening up more and better wind sites. The companies’ developments will also serve as a testbed for making large-scale, cost-efficient hydrogen production a reality.

Further, the developments are part of the H2Mare initiative, which, under the consortium lead of Siemens Energy, is a modular project consisting of multiple sub-projects to which more than 30 partners from industry, institutes and academia are contributing. Siemens Energy and Siemens Gamesa will contribute to the H2Mare initiative with each company’s own developments in separate modular building blocks.

Hydrogen and its role in the green energy transition

Currently, 80 million tons of hydrogen are produced each year and production is expected to increase by about 200 million tons by 2030. Siemens Gamesa reports that only 1% of that hydrogen is currently generated from green energy sources; the bulk is obtained from natural gas and coal, emitting approximately 830 million tons of CO₂ per year. Replacing this current polluting consumption would require 820 gigiwatts (GW) of wind generating capacity, 26% more than the current global installed wind capacity. Looking further ahead, many studies suggest that by 2050 production will have grown to about 500 million tons with a significant shift to green hydrogen. The expected growth will require between 1,000 GW and 4,000 GW of renewable capacity by 2050 to meet demand, which highlights the vast potential for growth in wind power.