Iv-Offshore & Energy one of the proud partners of PosHYdon: world’s first offshore green hydrogen production pilot on a working platform

To achieve the Paris Climate Agreement goals, the supply of sustainable energy must increase significantly. However, realising this takes more than producing wind and solar energy. The offshore production of green hydrogen offers opportunities, but up till now this has never been done before. PosHYdon is world’s first pilot project to validate the integration of three energy systems (offshore wind, offshore gas and offshore hydrogen) on a working platform in the Dutch North Sea by producing hydrogen from seawater. This will involve the installation of a hydrogen-producing plant (a 1MW pilot electrolysis system) on the Neptune Energy-operated Q13a-A platform. It is a promising initiative, for which the Dutch government provided a DEI+ subsidy. With this, the pilot project has officially started. Iv-Offshore & Energy is confident that the PosHYdon pilot will be a success, and is proud to be one of the partners.

Making the Q13a-A platform suitable

Within the PosHYdon pilot, Iv-Offshore & Energy is responsible for defining the requirements for the  electrolysis system to fit the offshore application. In order to accommodate the electrolyser on the Q13a-A platform, a series of adaptations are required. Iv-Offshore & Energy will provide the engineering for the necessary platform modifications and the system integration to facilitate offshore hydrogen production.

How the offshore hydrogen production will work

The Q13a-A platform is the first fully electrified platform in the Dutch North Sea, located approximately 13 kilometres off the coast of Scheveningen, the Netherlands. Once the hydrogen-producing plant is installed, a maximum of 400 kilogrammes of green hydrogen can be produced per day. In practice, the production of green hydrogen on this platform will work as follows: electricity generated by offshore wind turbines will be used to power the hydrogen plant on the Q13a-A platform, converting seawater into demineralised water, then into hydrogen via electrolysis. The green hydrogen will be mixed with the gas and transported via the existing gas pipeline to the coast.

Conversion of wind power into hydrogen by means of electrolysis is a way to mitigate the risk of grid overload by bringing wind power into the energy system in the form of molecules instead of electrons. This creates balancing options for the electricity grid by enabling peak shaving, and promotes further growth of wind power capacity far beyond that of the onshore power grid.

The aim of the PosHYdon pilot

The aim of the PosHYdon pilot is to gain experience of integrating working energy systems at sea and the production of hydrogen in an offshore environment. In addition, in this project the efficiency of an electrolyser with a variable power supply from offshore wind will be tested, and at the same time knowledge and insights on the costs for the offshore installation as well as maintenance costs will be obtained.

An indispensable consortium partner to complete the value chain

Iv-Offshore & Energy has contributed to many oil and gas platforms worldwide, and has been involved in many offshore wind projects ever since the earliest developments in the offshore wind industry. The company strongly believes that hydrogen will play an important role in the energy transition, and wants to be involved in the first front-end developments in the (offshore) hydrogen production as well. Iv-Offshore & Energy is convinced that it can make a significant contribution to the further development of offshore green hydrogen production, thanks to its specialist technical knowledge and many years of experience in both the offshore oil and gas industry and the offshore wind industry.