THE HYDROGEN OPPORTUNITY | SPECIAL REPORT


There are also applications in the power sector and for the nuclear industry, hydrogen is an important opportunity. To understand why requires a digression to examine why hydrogen is also an important opportunity for the renewables industry. Using weather-dependent renewables means a glut of


power generated at times when conditions are favourable – PV farms on sunny days and wind farms in windy periods – with a variety of effects. At times of glut, the price achievable by generators drops dramatically (sometimes referred to as price cannibalisation) and in Europe there are already short periods when spot market prices are negative, because there is more power available than the system can transmit. When large scale solar – whether on rooftops and (as now required in France) car park canopies, or as ‘utility- scale’ ground-based solar farms – briefly fulfils all demand as generation rises and falls on sunny days, as happens in some regions.


At other times, when the weather is unfavourable, the


price achievable by generators rises dramatically – but renewables generators are unable to take advantage of it. These issues of managing production and demand are


already well known to nuclear generators, which are also unable to respond to power market conditions – in this case, because nuclear plants are operated most efficiently at full power. With substantial nuclear capacity there may be a surfeit of power at time, such as the night time, when demand drops. Power companies have dealt with this problem by


offering cheaper rates at night time, largely but not exclusively for industrial users who have a 24-hour demand. Hydrogen production could solve the problem for both types of low-carbon generation. If excess power is being generated at low (or even negative) prices it can power an electrolyser to produce hydrogen instead. This simultaneously avoids the nuclear operator having to find other customers to take power at low prices, and gives it an additional product to sell – and importantly one that can be relatively easily stored – and an opportunity to arbitrage between the two. They, like renewables operators, should see it not just as a market for excess power but also a hedge against periods when electricity prices plummet. (Nor should it be forgotten that oxygen is the by-product when of electrolysis of water and if it does not have the energy applications of hydrogen it should be noted that sales of industrial oxygen in the USA reached nearly $70bn in 2023, according to Future Market Insights, and are growing at nearly 9% year-on-year.) This has clearly attracted Constellation’s interest beyond Nine Mile Point: it said that it is working with public and private entities representing every phase in the hydrogen value chain to pursue development of regional hydrogen production and distribution hubs and has committed to invest $900mn through 2025 for commercial clean hydrogen production using nuclear energy. This includes participation in the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen (MachH2), Northeast Clean Hydrogen Hub and Mid-Atlantic Hydrogen Hub, all of which are exploring projects to develop hydrogen infrastructure in collaboration with DOE.


A growing market This need to solve the problem of variability will be a major factor in increasing the market demand for hydrogen many times over.


Variability is a major issue for electricity system


operators and there are several solutions depending on the timescale. Over periods of one or two hours, batteries can absorb or release excess power. Batteries have other revenue streams, as their fast response means they are also able to help network operators keep within limits for frequency variations. For example, the UK is a global leader in building out


offshore wind farms and is also building large scale solar. The two are largely complementary, aided by battery storage, and the UK market now has over 60 GW of short- duration storage in operation or planned – more than a typical peak load. Hydrogen is another option to manage short term


variability, if used to replace methane in gas turbines or gas engine arrays. But it could also help solve the more difficult problem of longer duration variability. Again, the UK is a good example. It has ambitious targets to increase offshore wind capacity, largely in the North Sea, to 50 GW by 2030. At full generation that will supply most of the UK’s demand. But in some years, in the coldest winter periods – January and February – the UK and the North Sea as a whole see periods as long as two or three weeks of cold, calm weather. To an increasingly renewables-dependent system this has become known as a ‘wind drought’ – and the UK cannot rely on its neighbouring countries to fill the gap because they too are heavily dependent on North Sea wind farms affected by the same weather conditions. This is why the market for hydrogen is expected to


grow fast – and why it is an important market for nuclear operators.


At the moment, hydrogen produced by electrolysis using nuclear power is in a technology-readiness race with hydrogen produced from methane, which can be described as low carbon only if carbon capture and storage is incorporated into the process. Nuclear is also in a race with hydrogen produced by


electrolysis using renewable generation. In this case, the two options have some common technology development aims, such as reducing the cost of electrolysers. But their offer to the system is differentiated because nuclear has two additional potential benefits: access to high temperatures, which allows more efficient electrolysers to be used; and its large rotating machinery (in the form of the turbine generator) which provides valuable stability to keep electricity supply within voltage and frequency limits. Electrolysis uses one of three technologies: alkaline, PEM or solid oxide electrolyser cells (SOECs). The alkaline process has been used for over a century and PEM versions can operate effectively at a range of loads with sub-second response times, which makes them particularly compatible with variable energy sources, such as sun and wind power. SOECs use a ceramic electrolyte at high temperatures and are the least commercialized of the three technologies but they have higher electrical efficiency than the other two systems and “are likely to be more cost-effective in scenarios where high-temperature heat is available, such as from nuclear power plants and concentrated solar power”.


US road map for nuclear hydrogen The nuclear hydrogen programme has kicked off successfully. The Nine Mile Point experiment “tangibly demonstrates that our nation’s existing reactor fleet can produce clean hydrogen today,” said Dr. Kathryn Huff,


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