The Hydrogen Islands
Orkney’s abundance of natural resources has enabled rapid growth in renewable energy. Since 2013, Orkney has generated over 100% of its electricity demand from renewable energy, mostly onshore wind.
However, the current grid infrastructure, which was designed only to bring electricity to the islands, is a key barrier to Orkney reaching its full renewable energy export potential.
This has led to the exploration of how best to store and use renewable energy, and here is where Orkney’s hydrogen story begins.
What is hydrogen?
Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical element in the universe, found in water, plants, animals and humans.
Currently most hydrogen used in the production of chemicals, fertilisers, rocket fuel, food production, oil treatment etc. is ‘cracked’ from methane (CH4) and results in the carbon being released. The production of most hydrogen therefore currently adds to the carbon burden of the atmosphere.
However hydrogen can be also produced from the electrolysis of water (H2O). By passing an electric current through water this splits the water into its component parts of hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) with no harmful by-products provided the electricity is, itself, ‘green’.
Orkney began looking at the opportunities that the production of hydrogen from the county’s bountiful renewable energy sources could provide in 2015.
Hydrogen in Orkney
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) began developing its hydrogen infrastructure in 2016, with the installation of an electrolyser at its tidal test site on Eday. The project (called Surf’n’Turf) was supported by the Scottish Government to demonstrate how green hydrogen could be generated using tidal and wind energy.
- 2017 – EMEC achieved the world’s first tidal-generated hydrogen using power from tidal energy clients, Orbital and Tocardo, who were testing tidal energy devices on site.
Once the hydrogen has been generated, it is stored and transported in specially designed hydrogen storage trailers. The hydrogen is then shipped to Kirkwall where a 75 kW fuel cell housed at Kirkwall Pier converts the hydrogen back to electricity to be used as auxiliary power for the ferries when docked in the harbour (a process known as ‘cold ironing’).
Today, Orkney is a hub for hydrogen research and development activities to demonstrate the use of hydrogen in decarbonising power, heat and transport applications.
- 2018 – a 1 MW electrolyser operated by ITM Power was installed on the island of Shapinsay to reduce local wind turbine curtailment.
- 2020 – ZeroAvia, through the HyFlyer project, achieved the world-first hydrogen-electric flight, with hydrogen supplied by EMEC.
- 2021 – EMEC and HIAL collaborated to decarbonise heat and power at Kirkwall Airport through a green hydrogen combined heat and power system.
Visit the EMEC website to find out about past and present hydrogen projects in Orkney.
Opportunities
Green hydrogen could also play an important role as a building block to produce low-carbon derivative fuels.
- 2021 – Synthetic fuel, produced using hydrogen supplied by EMEC, was used by the Royal Air Force for its first fully synthetically fuelled flight.
Hydrogen solutions developed in Orkney will therefore be applicable to other communities facing similar energy-related challenges of their own as we transition to a low-carbon society.
Neil Kermode, EMEC Managing Director
“Innovation is a journey of discovery, bringing people, ideas and networks together to make things happen. You might not end where you intended to, but you will end somewhere, and most importantly, you will have moved. The lessons learnt are key to developing a sector as novel as hydrogen is, creating a knowledge economy that benefits future projects”