The world's first offshore wind–green hydrogen pilot just triumphed - Electrek
The world's first offshore wind-green hydrogen pilot just triumphed
The world’s first offshore wind–green hydrogen pilot has just produced its first green hydrogen off the coast of France.
Wind-generated electricity can power water electrolysis – that’s the process of using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen – to produce green hydrogen, and this is exactly what just happened.
French green hydrogen company Lhyfe announced that its offshore wind–green hydrogen pilot, a 200-square-meter (2,153-square-foot) platform called Sealhyfe, has produced its first kilos of green hydrogen.
From September 2022 to May 2023, Sealhyfe was moored at the Quai des Frégates in the Port of Saint-Nazaire.
Sealhyfe, which has a 1 megawatt (MW) electrolyzer, was towed 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) offshore in May, off the coast of Le Croisic, near Nantes. It was then connected via cable to French engineering school Central Nantes’ SEM-REV offshore testing hub, which is operated by the OPEN-C Foundation. SEM-REV was already linked to the 2 MW Floatgen floating wind turbine.
Once Sealhyfe was hooked up, it began to produce its first kilos of offshore green hydrogen. When it becomes fully operational, the green hydrogen pilot project will be able to produce up to 400 kilograms (882 pounds) of hydrogen daily.
Sealhyfe has a floating platform called WAVEGEM that has been reengineered to stabilize the production unit at sea. In its second trial phase, it’s now going to be put to the test in more difficult real-life conditions in the Atlantic Ocean.
Matthieu Guesné, founder and CEO of Lhyfe, said:
Our team – supported brilliantly by our partners – has achieved a genuine feat of technology in successfully designing this first floating green hydrogen production site.
We are extremely proud to be the first in the world to produce hydrogen at sea. This has been our wish since the launch of the company and we continue to move very quickly on offshore, which for us represents a tremendous development opportunity for mass producing hydrogen and decarbonising industry and transport.
Read more: Meet the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell-powered container handler
Photo: Lhyfe
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Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.