Earlier this year, the UK government in keeping with many other nations laid out its hydrogen strategy plan. This equates to a target of 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production by 2030. Presently, the most common production route for hydrogen is steam methane reformation. Hydrogen can also be produced through electrolysis of which there are four main types; alkaline, PEM, Anion exchange membranes and solid oxide. The Anion exchange membrane is currently <5000 hours life span and the solid oxide electrolyser has a stack capital cost that exceeds £1500/kWe. The alkaline electrolyser is cheaper at a stack cost of £200/kWe and the PEM is close to £300/kWe. The total cost including balance of plant is closer to £700-£1000/kWe including rectifiers, H2 purification, water supply and purification and cooling. Most units are manufactured at around 1MW, however, there are plans for a 20MW trial unit. The government has also pledged to move to 100% renewable energy and therefore to meet the technical requirements around electricity grid stability including meeting winter peak at times of low wind, additional capacity renewable generation needs to be installed. Instead of curtailing a wind farm due to grid based operational constraints, the energy produced as part of this can be used to produce hydrogen at minimal extra operating cost. The cost of the hydrogen therefore depends on the capital costs of the technology, storage and transport. If there is ample free electricity, for which there is little other use, then the efficiency of the hydrogen producing is less of an issue than its cost. This proposal looks at using an alternative and complimentary technology to electrolysers to achieve this; the battolyser. A battolyser is a battery/electrolyser combined and is based on aqueous flow battery technology. Because it is pre-designed for battery functionality too, the electrodes may be more stable than those in an electrolyser. Flow batteries are being designed in scales of up to 100MW, 500MWh compared to Electrolysers at a planned 20MW and therefore there is good potential to scale up battolyser technology quickly once it passes early stage TRL hurdles. Additional advantages of a battolyser include the use of low hazard chemicals and the higher availability of materials used in manufacture. There is also additional potential to link into existing recycling facilities helping with long term sustainability planning. As the battolyser is a single device which can produce both electricity and hydrogen it has the potential to be more economically viable than an electrolyser because of the multiple value streams. This project will research the potential of a battolyser to produce low cost green hydrogen. The project aims to show that this is both financially viable and technically possible by modelling, prototyping and characterising a green hydrogen producing battolyser in conjunction with an offshore wind farm. The team based at the Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technologies (CREST) at Loughborough University will be joined by wind farm experts from Strathclyde University and partner companies FibreTech, Arenko and SSE to complete this research into zero emission hydrogen.

Increased energy storage storage is needed on the electrical network to support high levels of variable renewable electricity such as wind and solar to enable us to reach our net-zero goals. The UK network currently has 5.3GW of energy storage of which 1.3GW is battery energy storage and this is expected to grow by at least 8GW by 2030. However, this alone does not meet the estimated required capacity, we therefore need to use the storage that we have optimally, for example, the location of storage and when we use it is critical to avoid congestion on the network. We also need to promote the installation of different types of storage that can operate over different time scales so that for example excess generation in one season can be used in the next. The aim of the project is to determine how different distributed energy storage assets, of different sizes and technologies, can be integrated into the grid as part of a whole-system solution to enable adaptability, flexibility and resilience. The project will investigate where and how assets are connected to the grid, how they are controlled and what policies and market conditions are required to meet our storage requirements. The research will be carried out across 5 collaborating institutions with the work underpinned by experiments using operational grid-scale storage demonstrators operated within the consortium. The outputs will include: - Recommendations for optimal planning and scheduling of distributed storage under different policy and market conditions including incentives/regulation of locational deployment - The impacts of different levels of coordination of distributed storage across location, scale, and markets - Demonstrations of practical, scalable solutions for the coordinated control of storage assets and other sources of flexibility - A roadmap that describes the decision points and options for the energy system as distributed energy storage grows according to different scenarios to 2035.