German industrial conglomerate Thyssenkrupp’s Uhde Chlorine Engineers’ Green Hydrogen division has won an order to install an 88MW electrolysis plant for Canadian energy group Hydro-Québec after successfully completing a feasibility study.

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The electrolysis plant is slated to be commissioned in late 2023 in Varennes, in the province of Quebec, and will be one of the world’s largest production facilities for green hydrogen produced from renewable power, with an expected annual output of more than 11,000 tonnes of H2.

Linking electrolysis to hydropower could be particularly efficient, because green hydrogen is cheaper to produce when electrolysers are working around the clock.

"This project is an excellent illustration of how important the interaction of secure access to competitive renewable energy and the use of scaled technology for hydrogen production is," said Sami Pelkonen, chief executive of Thyssenkrupp's chemical & process technologies business unit.

Hydro-Québec is one of North America’s largest producers of hydroelectric power.

Gigawatt scale hydrogen

Both the hydrogen and the oxygen, a by-product of the electrolysis process, will be used in a biofuel plant to produce biofuels from residual waste for the transportation sector, Thyssenkrupp said.

Denis Krude, chief executive of Thyssenkrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers, added: "Quebec as a region and Hydro-Québec as a customer offer ideal conditions for installing our water electrolysis technology on a multi-megawatt scale for the first time."

The company stressed the need for scaled technology for producing green hydrogen for it to become economically viable. Thyssenkrupp said it offers its electrolysis technology in the world’s largest standard modules, which it said can be easily combined to achieve capacities in the multi-megawatt and gigawatt range.

"With the expansion of our annual supply chain to one gigawatt, our large standard modules and the global presence of our company as an EPC supplier, we already have an ideal starting position in a market that is becoming more dynamic," said Christoph Noeres, head of green hydrogen at Thyssenkrupp Uhde Chlorine Engineers.