Hydrogen project in central Utah will be largest in world

What is touted to be the world’s largest industrial green hydrogen production and storage facility received a conditional commitment of more than $504 million in federal funding, a big development for the Advanced Clean Energy Storage project.

And it will be near Delta in Millard County in central Utah, which is already home to Enel Green Power’s plant in Cove Fort, the world’s first large-scale power generation facility to successfully combine geothermal with hydropower technology.

Central Utah, also home to solar fields, wind farms, vast geothermal resources and the transformation of hog manure into renewable natural gas, definitely has it going on when it comes to the renewable energy revolution and being a player on the world stage.

There are a lot of gee-whiz factors with the Advanced Clean Energy project, which is a combined effort among Mitsubishi Powers America, Magnum Development, Haddington Ventures and IPP Renewed.

The Intermountain Power Plant near Delta is transitioning from coal at its two 900-megawatt units to natural gas and hydrogen. The plant will host two combined-cycle units to use those two energy resources in a transition expected by mid-2025. By 2045, it will run purely on hydrogen.

Michael Ducker, senior vice president of hydrogen infrastructure for Mitsubishi Powers America and president of Advanced Clean Energy Storage, said the scale of the project both in generation and storage is what is creating the excitement.

Because there is an abundance of renewable energy derived from wind and solar, the development of those sources of electricity has to be curtailed — the systems aren’t being used to their full capacity.

The project will take that excess solar and wind capacity and through a process called alkaline electrolysis, it will separate oxygen and hydrogen from water through 220 megawatt electrolyzers, producing up to 110 tons of hydrogen a day.

It is called green hydrogen because it is derived from a renewable power source.

Source: https://www.ksl.com/