CrossWind, a joint venture between Shell and Eneco developing the 759 MW Hollandse Kust Noord wind farm off the Netherlands, has signed a contract with Elogen, a Gaztransport & Technigaz (GTT) group company, to design and manufacture a Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyser with a power of 2.5 MW.
The electrolyser will convert the green electricity from the wind turbines on-site into green hydrogen, giving the project more flexibility to adapt to variations in power output, CrossWind said.
”We are looking forward to this partnership with Elogen to innovate offshore wind at Hollandse Kust Noord in the North Sea. With the contract in place, and the electrolyser instated with the latest technologies, we will be able to demonstrate and accelerate the energy transition by 2025,” Tjalling de Bruin, CrossWindHKN’s Project Director and CEO, said.
Hollandse Kust Noord is being constructed some 18.5 kilometres off the coast of Egmond aan Zee.
The monopile installation at the site started in October 2022 and was completed earlier this month.
The TP-less monopiles, which were manufactured at Sif’s Maasvlakte facility in Rotterdam, will support Siemens Gamesa’s SG 11.0-200 DD 11 MW wind turbines scheduled to be fully commissioned later this year.
The PEM electrolyser is one of the five technology solutions to ensure continuous power supply that CrossWind plans to utilise at the wind farm.
The five solutions include a floating solar park , short-term battery storage, wind turbines that are optimally tuned to the network to minimise the negative ‘wake’-effects that wind turbines have on each other, green hydrogen made by electrolysis as a further storage technique, and the combination of these individual measures to ensure a continuous power supply regardless of the wind situation.