A Siemens Energy industrial gas turbine has been operated on 100% renewable hydrogen in France.
Installed at paper packaging company Smurfit Kappa’s site in Saillat-sur-Vienne, the HYFLEXPOWER project saw hydrogen produced by a 1MW electrolyser which was then stored in a tank for use by the Siemens SGT-400 turbine.
Made up on Siemens Energy, ENGIE, Centrax, Arttic, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and four European Universities, the project aimed to demonstrate the viability of using hydrogen as a flexible energy storage medium.
Siemens supplied the electrolyser and turbine; ENGIE built the hydrogen production, storage and supply; Centrax provided the upgrade package to ensure safe operation with hydrogen; and the DLR and universities contributed to turbine technology development.
“The knowledge and experience gained from the HYFLEXPOWER project… will help us to continue to develop our entire gas turbine fleet for a hydrogen-based future,” said Karim Amin, Member of the Executive Board of Siemens Energy.
“The interaction between electrolysis, storage and conversion at one site has been impressively demonstrated and now it’s a matter of scaling the results,” Amin added.
Following on from the success of the trial, the HYFLEXPOWER consortium plans to add more members to extend operations to industrial heat production and to explore ways of scaling up and commercialising decarbonised electricity generation.
In November (2022), Siemens and EnBW revealed they would install hydrogen-capable two gas turbines with a combined 62MW output at EnBW district heating power plant in Stuttgart-Munster.
ENGIE’s Executive Vice-President in charge of Energy Solutions, Frank Lacroix, said, the project was remarkable, continuing, “It has enabled between several European partners, for the forward-looking technologies it has tested, and for the promising prospects it opens up for the use of renewable hydrogen in the industrial sectors most difficult to decarbonise.”
The project received “substantial” funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.