Optimisation key to drive down green hydrogen costs: Rockwell interview

Data-driven automation can help optimise green hydrogen production, helping the nascent industry scale up to the level required to play its role in a net-zero future, Alain Hermans, process industries and marketing manager at global industrial automation firm Rockwell Automation, tells NewsBase.

Green hydrogen, produced from water using electrolysis, powered by renewable energy, is widely recognised as being a critical pathway towards decarbonisation, both providing a means of storing wind and solar power in chemical form and serving as a direct energy source in hard-to-abate sectors. Yet the pace of development has been slow, partly because green hydrogen remains significantly more expensive than other low-carbon gas options, such as blue hydrogen and biomethane.

The key to overcoming this challenge is optimisation, Hermans says. Optimising the production of green hydrogen, partly through the use of digital solutions and AI, will become all the more important as developers have to contend with increasingly stringent standards for return on investment to secure US and EU funding for their projects, according to Hermans. 

“The Green Deal in Europe and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the US both attract customers to come talk with us, because to get funding from governments, you need to have a strong business case with a certain return on investment and a certain level of optimisation,” he explains. 

Optimisation is also important for projects to secure customers, given green hydrogen’s current lack of cost competitiveness with alternative low-carbon choices.

Rockwell has a “pipeline of opportunities” worth $200mn in work assisting companies in optimising their green hydrogen projects, according to Hermans.

Energy usage but optimised, using data-driven automation to produce green hydrogen when it is most efficient to do so, depending on factors such as energy prices, demand and supply. This includes creating models to predict future energy demand and supply,  optimising production levels and avoiding wastage. Increased automation can also predict failures more efficiently, optimise maintenance schedules and improve distribution of hydrogen. 

Among the solutions that Rockwell offers is FactoryTalk DataMosaix, which offers cloud-based data analytics for multiple sites. “It helps you not only collect the data but also contextualise it and make meaningful dashboard decisions,” Hermans says.

Rockwell’s solutions are also ideal for scaling up production, as projects do not need to rely on traditional distributed control systems. 

“With Rockwell you can scale your automation system depending on your needs,’ Hermans says. “This scalability is important because no one is going to build a 1 GW plant from scratch. They can start small and expand their scope as they go.”

In Europe, the green hydrogen market is taking a lot longer to scale up than was envisaged in the EU’s Hydrogen Strategy published in 2020. The strategy set an ambitious target to produce 10mn tonnes per year of green hydrogen by 2030, but current production is still minimal, prompting the European Court of Auditors to call for a “reality check” on the plan earlier this year. The majority of planned green hydrogen projects are found in the south of Europe, where there are ample solar resources, and in the north, where there is significant wind power potential.

“New markets often start with government-funded projects, and it will take a certain amount of time for the technology to improve, for customers to buy into it,” Hermans explains. 

In particular, he points to the need to reduce maintenance requirements for electrolysers, as well as avoid the contamination of water from membrane particles.

Some projects will not survive, as they will be unable to secure enough customers, but the ones that do will be the most efficient, having optimised their operations, he says. But just as happened with the internet or digitalisation, the pace of green hydrogen development may be slow now but it will accelerate over time, according to Hermans. And how quickly it scales up will depend on lowering costs.

“Forcing customers to use it will not work. It needs to be cost-effective.”