Gigastack Project to Continue

GBP 7.5 million funding has been awarded for the next phase of Gigastack, a new renewable hydrogen project, as part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Hydrogen Supply Competition. Gigastack wants to demonstrate how low-cost, zero-carbon hydrogen in the UK can be brought to industrial scale. The project consortium includes ITM Power, Ørsted, Phillips 66 Limited and Element Energy.

By using renewable electricity - from an offshore wind farm - the process of producing hydrogen from water (electrolysis) can be completely decarbonised - a milestone for energy-intensive industries and the transportation sector. They will be able to reduce the carbon intensity of their fuels by using renewable hydrogen.

The initial phase of Gigastack finished last year. ITM Power developed designs for a low-cost modular 5 megawatt (MW) electrolyser 'stack', collaborating with Ørsted to understand the potential synergies with offshore wind farms and with Element Energy to undertake a market analysis and explore business models for the first industrial-scale 100MW electrolysers.

Image: Ørsted

For the second phase of the project, the consortium will conduct a Front-End Engineering Design ('FEED') study on a 100MW electrolyser system using staged installations with a nominal capacity of 20MW.

Anders Christian Nordstrøm, Vice President for Hydrogen, Ørsted, said: "Creating renewable hydrogen with offshore wind really has the potential to decarbonise industrial processes, and what is needed now is to scale up the electrolyser technology and bring the cost down. We've seen this happen in offshore wind. With industry and government working together, there has been a rapid deployment and a huge cost reduction. This project aims to do the same with hydrogen. At the right cost, this technology has the potential to play a huge role in meeting the UK's decarbonisation targets. We're excited to be part of this project in the Humber region where we are already very active, including constructing the biggest offshore wind farms in the world, Hornsea One and Two, and with them setting the global standard for deployment of offshore wind at scale."

To read more about the project, visit the Ørsted homepage.