Emerson, a global leader in software and engineering, will automate the world’s largest green hydrogen production and storage facility for Mitsubishi Power Americas, Inc.
The hub will aid in the integration of renewable energy by producing and storing green hydrogen for long-term energy storage. Mitsubishi Power will employ Emerson’s expertise in hydrogen production and automation software to boost safety, save costs, and simplify facility maintenance over the facility’s lifetime.
Excess renewable energy created throughout the winter and spring is difficult and expensive to store in its native state for use during the summer’s peak season, and is therefore lost. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub will utilize renewable electricity to power electrolyzers that generate clean hydrogen. The created hydrogen will be stored underground in salt caverns so that it may be dispatched as needed to generate clean power from hydrogen-fueled turbines. This will help to stabilize the grid with renewable sources and pave the road for the decarbonization of the western United States.
“Generating, storing and transmitting electricity with zero carbon emissions is critical to meeting the world’s sustainable power generation needs,” said Michael Ducker, senior vice president of Hydrogen Infrastructure for Mitsubishi Power Americas and president of Advanced Clean Energy Storage I. “Emerson’s hydrogen expertise and digitally connected architecture design will help shorten time to start up, while also developing a safe, reliable and easily scalable transmission system to meet our goals for renewable energy production and storage.”
Using a 220-megawatt (MW) electrolyzer bank, the Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub will transform renewable energy into up to 100 tons of green hydrogen each day. In two salt caverns, the facility will store 300 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity. In comparison, the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries in the United States is 2 GWh. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub may accommodate up to one hundred caverns.
This first-of-its-kind integrated facility will provide short- and long-term hydrogen storage for use at the neighboring 840-MW Intermountain Power Project during peak seasons and throughout the year (IPP Renewed). IPP Renewed will initially use 30 percent (vol) hydrogen fuel in Mitsubishi Power M501JAC gas turbines and will transition to 100 percent (vol) hydrogen by 2045. Emerson and Mitsubishi Power are partnering on digital solutions for IPP Renewed in order to enhance plant efficiency, improve dependability, and provide greener, more reliable energy.
“One of the most complex issues in power distribution is successfully managing variability of demand and supply to reduce stress on the grid,” said Bob Yeager, president of Emerson’s power and water business. “Mitsubishi Power has successfully leveraged the digital automation stack to develop an innovative, sustainable way to solve that problem, enabling providers to consistently use peak-production renewable energy in peak-consumption hours.”
Mitsubishi Power will utilize Emerson’s Ovation integrated control and safety platform to optimize the production efficiency and safety of the Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub. The Ovation platform will offer dependable control and monitoring of the renewable hydrogen production process, as well as emergency shutdown, fire, and gas protection. Additionally, the platform will collect and interpret data from the plant’s vast array of third-party systems in order to reduce complexity and risk. Emerson’s PACSystems RSTi-EP I/O will simplify field connectivity and help permit project changes without prolonging timelines or increasing costs, while AMS Device Manager will assist in monitoring the health of plant assets to enhance safety, dependability, efficiency, and sustainability.
