Dutch offshore wind-to-hydrogen project gathers feasibility study team

The consortium comprising RWE and Neptune Energy has awarded contracts to Siemens Gamesa and Dutch engineering companies H2SEA and Enersea to support concept engineering work as part of the feasibility study for the H2opZee green hydrogen project in the Netherlands.

H2opZee, announced earlier this year and planned to be built before 2030 in the Dutch North Sea, is a demonstration project which aims to build 300-500 MW electrolyser capacity to produce green hydrogen using offshore wind and to transport it to land through an existing pipeline.

The joint feasibility study, which began this June, is planned to run until the beginning of Summer in 2023 and forms part of the first phase of H2opZee in which various technical concepts and potential development locations are being evaluated to assess the optimal solution to generate green hydrogen offshore and transport it to shore via a pipeline.

In the second phase, the project will be implemented. For that phase, a tender methodology has yet to be defined, the project consortium said.

Under their contracts, H2SEA will perform offshore platform concept design and engineering, Enersea will take on the pipeline concept design, and Siemens Gamesa will carry out concept work for wind turbine systems.

The remainder of the technical work will be supported by in-house engineering at RWE and Neptune Energy, which are also working closely with offshore infrastructure owners to evaluate various export options via the existing pipeline network to shore.

“Following the very successful roll-out of wind farms producing green electricity in the Dutch North Sea, offshore green hydrogen is the next step in the energy transition and crucial for our domestic future energy supply”, said Neptune Energy’s Managing Director in the Netherlands, Lex de Groot.

“It can be produced right here in the North Sea, giving the Netherlands a leading role in providing green energy to North Western Europe, reducing the need for imports”.

According to De Groot, re-using existing gas infrastructure can be a faster, cheaper, and cleaner solution for the energy transition as the infrastructure is both technically suitable and already in place, including landing and possible cross-border interconnections, such as Norway, Denmark, Germany, and the UK.

Lex de Groot also added that lessons learned from the PosHYdon pilot project, which was launched last year, will be applied to H2opZee.

“Large-scale production of green hydrogen based on offshore wind is a key solution to decarbonising the industry”, said Sven Utermöhlen, CEO Offshore Wind at RWE Renewables. “A demonstration project such as H₂opZee helps us to better understand how this could be put into practice. Thanks to our cooperation with partners such as Neptune Energy, Siemens Gamesa, H2SEA and Enersea, we are getting closer to achieving the Dutch climate goals”.

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