Siemens Gamesa is in talks over retrofitting electrolysers to rejuvenate the economics of ageing wind farms, a move that could speed green hydrogen to competitiveness as quickly as two years in some cases, said the executive leading the company’s H₂ strategy.

Juan Gutiérrez, Siemens Gamesa’s service CEO, said brownfield integration of turbine-powered hydrogen production could, in specific local cases, offer green hydrogen a fast-track route to match grey H₂ made using fossil fuels, which currently dominates the market.

“There are a lot of old wind farms where the turbines have been fully depreciated, have lost their incentive or feed-in tariff and are now exposed to the market,” Gutiérrez, who heads the green hydrogen business unit for the global wind OEM giant, told Recharge.

“In the short term we’re looking at where there are consumers of grey hydrogen and [whether we can] sell them green hydrogen at the same or lower cost.”

Grey hydrogen from unabated fossils is currently up to five times cheaper per kg than H₂ made using wind or solar, Gutiérrez said.

But he believes “there will be cases where you could find in the short term, two or three years, where you can achieve this leap, where [green hydrogen] is already competitive”.

Gutiérrez’s timescale is among the most bullish yet for green H₂ price-competitiveness, which some market commentators believe could take up to a decade to match grey H₂ and the blue variety from abated fossil fuels.

The Siemens Gamesa executive – giving his first media interview since being appointed service CEO last August – stressed that his short-term outlook relates to limited supplies in highly favorable specific local conditions, that allow projects to leverage the benefit of having turbines, grid connection and other infrastructure already in place.

The early wins are likely to come at projects with excellent wind conditions and reasonable proximity to a customer for the green hydrogen produced, to keep the cost of logistics as low as possible.

“The trick is, where do you have a consumer where you can sell the hydrogen now?” That could come in markets such as Spain, where the fertiliser industry has already signalled a strong interest in decarbonsing its ammonia production, he said.

Fitting electrolysers could if appropriate come in conjunction with repowering or life extension measures to maximise turbine output, added the Siemens Gamesa executive.

Gutiérrez said brownfield electrolyser deployment, in addition to integrating H₂ production with new-build wind, could help Siemens Gamesa win a significant share of what may be a 100GW market by 2030 for additional renewable capacity dedicated to green hydrogen.

He cited estimates that 40GW of that could come from onshore wind, with 15GW offshore – Recharge reported in January on a major Siemens Gamesa H₂ initiative in wind at sea – and the rest solar.

Brande pilot

Gutiérrez’s confidence in the opportunities for Siemens Gamesa comes partly from the early progress of the Spanish-German OEM’s onshore wind pilot project in Brande, Denmark, which produced its first hydrogen within in the last few weeks.

The Brande project links a 3MW turbine directly to a 400kW electrolyser, producing hydrogen in “island mode” with no connection to the grid, and according to Siemens Gamesa the first pilot of its kind globally. The project last year agreed a deal to sell hydrogen produced to fuel taxis in Denmark.

Brande is now being fitted with 560 kW/560kWh of battery storage in the next step to proving what Gutiérrez sees as Siemens Gamesa’s point of added value in the evolving green hydrogen market – as an integrator of key production elements with a deep understanding of the wind turbine.

“This is proving our value position, to integrate all these pieces.”

While it does not produce electrolysers, Gutiérrez said Siemens Gamesa can benefit from its relationship with parent group Siemens Energy, a global leader in that area.

The major cost driver for hydrogen is the cost of energy, and that we can control.

“But we know the wind turbines, how we can push the wind turbines.

“We can prove how this wind turbine interacts with the electrolyser, how we can push it harder,” Gutiérrez said.

“The electrolyser is one piece – but the major cost driver for hydrogen is the cost of energy, and that we can control, because we know the technology.”

The addition of electrolysers and potentially batteries too would mean “it’s not a wind farm anymore, it’s an energy plant that generates hydrogen, electricity and can offer ancillary services,” said the Siemens Gamesa executive.

“[We can] integrate these components and put a full wrap around it, where we can put an O&M agreement in place.”

Safe deployment

Poul Skjærbæk, chief innovation and product officer for Siemens Gamesa’s service business, told Recharge the Brande project had already brought valuable lessons on the practicalities of co-deploying electrolysis with onshore wind.

That includes the safety implications of adding “a chemical plant, even if it is a nice chemical plant” to a wind facility. “We’ve been able to convince everyone this is completely safe [as long as] the right approaches and procedures are in place – that’s a big learning for us.”

Skjærbæk told Recharge that the electrolyser units used to add production were completely scalable for large-scale wind plants, with retrofitting presenting few technical complexities.

The addition of electrolysis and batteries represents a major step towards giving onshore wind 100% market penetration, said Skjærbæk, with the ability to use electrolysers to shave off peaks, and plant operators to move between two forms of energy output – power or hydrogen – according to demand, as well as offering additional services for the grid.

“We’ll be testing that we can run the plant in a different way” as Brande brings its batteries online, he said.

Markets

Green hydrogen competitive in two years by giving new life to old wind: Siemens Gamesa chief