hydrogen

The Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue 2022 event has shown the centrality of renewables and green hydrogen in the world’s future energy landscape. pv magazine spoke with the General Director of the International Renewable Energy Agency, Francesco La Camera, about the difficulties of creating a hydrogen economy in the absence of demand. According to him, public support and policies will be crucial to overcoming this challenge.

A new deal between Fortescue Future Industries and E.ON will see the Australian company deliver 5 million tons of green hydrogen to Germany, the Netherlands, and multiple cities in Europe by 2030.

Western Australian company Global Energy Ventures has had several permissions granted for its 2.8GW green hydrogen export project on the Tiwi Islands, off the coast of the Northern Territory, including potentially increasing the acreage for its proposed solar farm.

The developer last year sold off 2.9GW of solar generation capacity to state-owned entities to reduce its debt pile by $1.76 billion and has another 298MW up for sale as it repeated its intent to switch to blue, and later, green hydrogen.

German scientists have tried to determine whether a PV system linked to a small electrolyzer, a fuel cell, and lithium-ion batteries could fully power a grid-connected household. Their new proposal consists of a 6.8kW PV array, a 5kW electrolyzer, a 1.24kW fuel cell system, and battery storage.

Alliander and Groenleven have completed construction on the Netherlands’ first green hydrogen production facility. It is connected to a 50MW solar park and is expected to generate hydrogen from June.

Japanese automaker Toyota has used its hydrogen tank tech in a new module to expand hydrogen storage to railways, shipping facilities, cargo ports, and fuel cell generators. Its 70MPa tank has a storage capacity of 2.7 kg to 18.7 kg and a tank mass ranging from 43.0 kg to 243.8 kg, depending on the size.

China presented on Mar. 23 its first long-term plan for hydrogen, targeting production of green hydrogen between 100,000 and 200,000 tonnes per year by 2025, while India and Japan have agreed to expand the scope of their energy collaboration to cover solar power, clean hydrogen, electric vehicles, and battery storage. Furthermore, French gas giant Air Liquide said it want to increase research investments in hydrogen mobility and heavy-duty mobility and German electrolyzer manufacturer Sunfire raised a total of €86 million to expand its manufacturing capacity.

A US-German research group has used above-bandgap light to improve ion mobility in ceramic materials used in lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells. It found that the grain boundary conductance of gadolinium-doped cerium oxide, which is a ceramic used as a solid-state electrolyte in fuel cells, can be improved by a factor of approximately 3.5 at 250 degrees Celsius, by applying the proposed light technique.

The state-owned UAE clean power developer appears to have quadrupled its previously announced ambition today as it announced its $20 billion renewables portfolio rose from 10.7GW to more than 15GW last year.