Giant Hydrogen Project Proposed for Scotland

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Plans for the U.K.'s first utility-scale green hydrogen project have been submitted to planning authorities in Scotland.

Statera Energy Limited (London) is looking to build a 500-megawatt (MW) green hydrogen plant in Kintore, Aberdeenshire, which it aims to commission in 2028. Powered by wind, the Kintore Hydrogen electrolysis plant will be capable of producing approximately 200 tonnes per day of green hydrogen. It will cost approximately £450 million (US$591 million) to develop. A second phase of the project will see capacity increased to 3 gigawatts (GW) to make it Europe's largest such facility. Statera claimed the full plant would be capable of supplying 60% of Scotland's green hydrogen targets and potentially save up to 1.4 million tonnes of carbon annually. The company wants the plant to use excess wind power which the current grid can't handle to make its green hydrogen.

Tom Vernon, chief executive officer of Statera Energy said: "We are delighted to have submitted planning for Kintore Hydrogen, the first utility scale green hydrogen project in the U.K.. If approved, Kintore Hydrogen could materially contribute to the growth of the U.K.'s hydrogen economy, support its energy independence, and accelerate the development of homegrown industrial supply chains. The Electricity System Operator forecasts a £5 billion (US$6.5 billion) saving to consumers if flexible demand, like hydrogen electrolysers, is strategically located behind electricity network bottlenecks in Scotland. Kintore Hydrogen's location, behind those bottlenecks and close to abundant water resources and wind power from the North Sea, can help to deliver these cost savings to energy users."

Statera, better known for battery energy storage system (BESS) projects, has been expanding into new fields over the past year. The company, which has roughly 1 GW of projects operational or under construction, is also looking into pumped hydro. Industrial Info is tracking the company's aim of building a 600-MW pumped hydro scheme on the south side of Loch Ness, at Whitebridge, Scotland. It would utilize the existing Loch Kemp as the upper storage reservoir and Loch Ness as the lower reservoir, with the potential to generate for 15 hours at full capacity, the equivalent of powering over one million homes. The company is also looking beyond its current portfolio of mainly 50 MW-sized BESS installations and is seeking permission for a 500-MW project at Culham Campus in Oxfordshire, England. Housed in roughly 300 converted shipping containers on 7 hectares of a 26-hectare site, the project will have 37 inverter houses, seven control rooms and four shipping containers for storage and welfare facilities and a customer substation.

Statera stated that increasing BESS units close to National Grid's strategic substations, such as Culham, will be critical to the decarbonisation of the U.K.'s electricity system. National Grid expects batteries to make up the largest share of storage power capacity by 2050 with battery use rising from current levels of 3 GW to as much as 20 GW by 2030 and 35 GW by 2050.

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