Green hydrogen company Lhyfe is hoping to find out before Christmas whether it has been granted planning consent for its first facility in the UK, at Wallsend near Newcastle. But a decision on whether to build the facility, which would provide hydrogen to business and transport customers in the second half of the decade, depends on success in the government’s second ‘allocation round’ for green hydrogen support in the form of contracts for difference. Boris Davis, Hydrogen Business Development (UK and Ireland) at Lhyfe, said the company has bid its Wallsend project, which would have 20MW of electrolyser capacity producing up to 8.5t of hydrogen per day, into Round 2 but it is not clear when the results will be announced.
If it goes ahead, Lhyse expects half Wallsend’s green hydrogen would be supplied via a short pipeline to a neighbouring industrial facility. Much of the remainder would be transported via tube trailers to a local heavy goods vehicle fleet operator. Lhyfe declined to name its potential customers in advance of the results of the allocation round.
Davis said that unlike some project developers Lhyfe had not found it difficult to get a grid connection and he expected that Northern Powergrid’s connection to the planned on-site substation would not delay the project.
The company will sign power purchase agreements with wind farms around the UK to get as consistent a power supply as possible, via the grid, for the 20MW electrolyser. The company has announced plans to use an electrolyser at its French site to provide demand response services to the grid, and that may also be possible at the Wallsend site. Davis said such potential demand response revenue lines might be in the Capacity Market or in NESO or DSO flexibility contracts.
One potential product of the site that has not found a customer is the oxygen by product of splitting hydrogen from water. Davis said co-locating oxygen compression and collection on the site was technically challenging.