Green Hydrogen
27th Hydrogen Thursdays
An endless number of concepts, analysis and information related to Green Hydrogen and its socio-economic context; 27 meetings and 58 speakers: this is the balance left by these first 6 months of the series of talks that, within the context of its Green Hydrogen Strategic Plan, has been offered by the Province of Rio Negro. Each of these meetings was presented in a weekly report where the magazine Naturaleza y Tecnología summarized the main aspects of each talk, with 27 statements of this interesting initiative from Río Negro, which still has a lot to be explained. In this case, the central focus was the "Use of Green Hydrogen to make the electric system more flexible", an approach proposed by Eng. Fernando Rubén Marull.
Fecha: 9 de diciembre de 2021
By Lic. Daniela Bentivoglio
REVISTA NATURALEZA Y TECNOLOGÍA
www.revistanyt.com.ar
The meeting took place in the same week in which Arabela Carreras, Governor of Río Negro, met in Casa Rosada with the President, Alberto Fernández for the execution of the agreement that set up the Free Trade Zone of Sierra Grande, one of the measures to facilitate the development of the Green Hydrogen Strategic Plan.
Under the moderation of Bruno Spizzirro Koch, subsecretary of Press of Río Negro, which depends on the Ministry of Government and Community, the twenty-seventh edition of the Thursdays series included the participation of Eng. Fernando Rubén Marull, technical auditor of CAMMESA and of the SEE Advisory Group, full professor at the National Technological University and co-director of the Concordia Hydrogen Center (CHC, in spanish). Besides other remarkable aspects of his extensive curriculum, it is worth mentioning his performance as Transmission Manager at the Salto Grande Hydroelectric Plant.
The presentation was entitled "Use of Green Hydrogen to make the electricity system more flexible", in which he made visible the points that should be optimized for an in-depth deployment of this promising technology. He emphasized aspects such as costs and extension works in the interconnected system, starting his intervention with some references to CHC (in spanish), which appeared in 2005 at the initiative of the renowned expert in renewable energies, Dr. Erico Spinadel.
"The objective of our work is to analyze the feasibility of electrolyzer systems in electric power systems in order to make the use of renewable energies more efficient", said Eng. Marull, and he assured that "the androgenic decarbonization allows us to predict the important role that Green Hydrogen systems will have in the future".
The issue of batteries (Battery Electric Storage System -BESS-) was one of the subjects on which the speaker focused, since "BESS have a great significance in the planning of Interconnected Systems".
Regarding BEES for Green Hydrogen, he evaluated factors such as economics, operation and network planning (among others). In this regard, he warned that "they will be viable in the medium term, due to the decrease of equipment costs and the increase of their efficiency together with a higher performance of future grids".
Eng. Marull also explained that grid management systems coupled with control centers (for voltage control) could be applied in order to "contribute to the balance of isolated or interconnected systems". He added that "these facilities will gain importance in the future planning of interconnected systems, which is still difficult today due to the lack of experience, legislation and adequate financing".
Regarding the production stage, the expert explained that "once the water is electrolyzed, the Green Hydrogen is stored in tanks or appropriate reservoirs until it is used for its intended purpose" and stressed that "today the cost of Hydrogen is 50% of the price of the energy to be hydrolyzed".
Finally, after an extensive technical detail on the factors that have an impact on the costs of this technology, and having also referred to the evolution of renewable energies, the engineer concluded that "investments in works of this type will have a key place in the future" and that "it is most likely that the legal and regulatory framework of these facilities will have to be adapted".
"Technological improvements and cost reductions will allow an important role to be assigned to the technology based on Green Hydrogen", concluded the speaker.