German utility E.ON and plant and steel maker ThyssenKrupp said they are starting to offer technology to market 'electricity market ready' green hydrogen (H2) from electrolysers via a software that provides the H2 only when there is excess power in the grid.

The principle is that if there is a high demand in the power grid, the plant will shut down H2 production so that the energy required for electrolysis is available to the public power supply, E.ON explains.

Conversely, hydrogen production is ramped up if more energy is fed into the grid than can be distributed.

The process is automatically controlled by E.ON’s ‘Virtual Power Plant’ software that links various mostly industrial producers and bulk purchasers of energy and controls the generation and consumption of these customers according to the current network load.

E.ON's virtual power plant controls about 150 plants in Germany and the UK and markets the electricity and flexibility from these plants. A total of around 600MW are marketed via the platform developed to connect and control decentralised technical units.

The innovation makes power-to-x systems more attractive for industry, E.ON reckons, arguing that the operator of a plant can market his willingness to adapt flexibly to general electricity demand and thus generate additional income on the electricity market.

“The cooperation with ThyssenKrupp follows our principle that the conversion of industry to clean energy must be essentially economical,” said Stefan Hakansson, chief executive of E.ON business solutions.

“With our expertise in all aspects of the energy market, we are also succeeding in breaking down a barrier to the sensible use of hydrogen to generate electricity.”

ThyssenKrupp and E.ON successfully tested the system at the Carbon2Chem pilot plant in Duisburg, Western Germany that has a capacity of up to 2MW. E.ON said it has also checked that the plant meets all the requirements for participation in the balancing power market.

Due to the high reaction speed of the ThyssenKrupp plant, the technology can even participate in the market for high-quality primary control power, which E.ON says was tested successfully with a transmission system operator.

“Previous tests had already shown that our electrolysis plants produce green hydrogen with high efficiencies,” said Christoph Noeres, head of energy storage & hydrogen at ThyssenKrupp.

“At the same time the plants are responsive and flexible enough to participate in the balancing energy market. Our plants thus make a decisive contribution to a stable power supply and at the same time make a significant contribution to the economic efficiency of green hydrogen.”

Transition

E.ON and ThyssenKrupp to offer 'electricity market ready' green hydrogen