Navigating the complexity of integrating hydrogen production with offshore wind farms

Moving hydrogen production facilities offshore will be the next step for scaling up projects. However, both projects and manufacturers are hesitant to make this move. The complexity involved in offshore construction and operation, along with the associated risks, is seen as particularly high, which contributes to this reluctance. Operational complexity can be handled with strategies from offshore wind as Deutsche Windtechnik AG knows, a Partners at AquaConsult, which offers support to boost hydrogen projects offshore. Let’s ask Deutsche Windtechnik a few questions about hydrogen offshore operations. We are interviewing Sebastian Guse who is one of the enablers at AquaConsult and Senior O&M Strategy Consultant at Deutsche Windtechnik, the world largest independent service provider, consulting on operation strategies for offshore wind farms. His entire career he is working in the field of offshore operation. Starting with Ørsted in 2014 coordinating the maintenance activities for the German cluster, followed by seven years of project development in Germany and Taiwan. During this time, he successfully developed the O&M set-up and strategy for several projects and prepared operation readiness within the projects. As part of Deutsche Windtechnik´s business development team, Sebastian is now offering his experiences to international clients within the offshore wind sector.

Sebastian, why should hydrogen production move offshore?

"There are many benefits to moving hydrogen production offshore, with the most basic one is availability of consistent wind power, so continuous supply to electrolysers for hydrogen production -a very energy intensive process. Offshore locations also pose fewer issues with acquiring land and permits. While permits are still required but there less pushbacks such as public opposition to facility installation or competition with agriculture and other local development projects. Additionally, there are many synergies which can be adopted from offshore industries such as personnel management, operational strategies, maintenance approaches, and other management practices."

Is the operational complexity of offshore environments pose a barrier to offshore hydrogen production?

"Though operational complexity possesses challenges but it’s not a critical roadblock. Producing energy offshore whether it’s electricity, oil & gas or hydrogen comes with its own set of unique demands. But we can learn a lot from the offshore industries, which have already developed effective strategies to manage these complexities. Their decades of experience in logistics, spare parts management, technical staffing, automation have shown us how offshore operations can succeed. This can also help us to tackle various challenges of offshore hydrogen production to a certain extent."

Please tell us more about logistic and spare parts management:

"Logistics for inspection and maintenance together with spare parts management organization, can be directly shared with the wind farms infrastructure. Hydrogen production benefits from well tested and existing infrastructure. Over the past few decades offshore logistic strategies have developed into solid solutions, with weather risks now being fully integrated into the contractual obligations. The Operator is not claimed for adverse weather, as in the past. New vessels and access equipment is further reducing weather downtime."

In which way automation and remote control for hydrogen is benefitting from offshore wind infrastructure?

"Hydrogen production facilities involve complex infrastructure such as electrolysers that have multiple operational parameters like wind turbines. Monitoring them requires specialized sensors and diagnostic tools to accurately assess their performance, detect anomalies, and predict maintenance needs. Monitoring complex facilities including predictive maintenance based on sensors and data analysis is the backbone of offshore wind operations. Due to challenges in the logistics, this industry is used to complex monitoring situations. The level of automation is increasing continuously. Hydrogen facilities can be integrated in existing structures, like control rooms and data analysis, reducing cost and risks. Aqua consult partners and Deutsche Windtechnik have extensive experience in continuous monitoring of wind farms through their control centers, which operate 24/7 and this experience can be extended to hydrogen production environment. We analyze real-time data to perform predictive maintenance, ensuring that potential issues are identified and addressed before they escalate. This approach can also be helpful in implementing safety protocols specifically tailored to hydrogen production and storage."

You mentioned personnel management as one benefit for hydrogen in the offshore environment. What is this about?

"We are using multiskilled technicians in the offshore industry. In the North Sea region off Germany, there’s quite a range of turbine manufacturers and several turbine models in operation. Together with numerous offshore substations with around 20 to 30 different systems installed, multiskilled technicians are needed to handle all kind of systems. The offshore wind industry has developed training and upskilling programs to address this complexity. Unlike other industries, here the operators have to gather all that technical expertise within their own teams.

The training and education centers from the offshore wind industry could really be beneficial for hydrogen production. They can train existing offshore personnel to become multidisciplinary workers, so they can integrate hydrogen operations and maintenance into their skill sets. Additionally, Offshore work comes with good conditions for workers, which makes it attractive. This can help hydrogen projects attract the technicians they need, especially as demand is growing in all industries."

How would you summarize the operational aspects for hydrogen production offshore?

"Operational challenges for hydrogen production facilities moving offshore can be talked with well-developed strategies from the offshore wind industry while offering benefits and win-win situations for both industries."

Thank you, Sebastian Guse and Deutsche Windtechnik AGfor your insights.

Get in touch with the enablers: Contact - AquaConsult

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