UK government commits £10m for hydrogen storage project

LONDON (ICIS)–The UK government has awarded the Whitelee hydrogen production and storage project with £9.4m in funding, supporting the deployment of a 10MW electrolyser and 200MWh storage facility by 2023.

The Whitelee hydrogen production and storage project was selected as a winner of the UK government’s “storage at scale” programme on 22 November, information from the Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy showed.

The project will be led by electrolyser manufacturer ITM Power and UK industrial supplier BOC.

The 10MW electrolyser is part of the first phase of a 20MW electrolyser project at the Whitelee 593MW onshore wind farm near Glasgow.

Output from the 10MW electrolyser is expected to average 2.5-4 tonnes of hydrogen per day, roughly 98-160MWh H2/day, for use in the transport sector.

UK HYDROGEN STORAGE

Hydrogen storage facilities are key to green hydrogen projects due to the intermittent nature of renewable generation. This is because electrolysers may out-produce demand on days of high power generation.

The Whitelee project will be one of the first large-scale hydrogen storage units in the UK, however projects planned for later in the decade will have substantially higher capacity.

Projects outlined by Storengy, INOVYN, SSE Thermal and Equinor show total capacity of their hydrogen storage projects could reach 2.42TWh.

Further along, Centrica told ICIS that it could convert its disused Rough facility to store hydrogen. The potential capacity of the project is 10TWh. The development of the site would require an investment of around £650m, rising up to £1.0-1.5bn after factoring in the required working volume of cushion gas.