Page 11: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Nov/Dec 2019)

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and the grid can be better connected when they’re over producing, the en- hydrogen export to shore, is also being to make the best and greenest use of ergy can be converted to hydrogen. looked at in the UK. The Hydrogen existing infrastructure. Rene Peters, The potential for use of offshore plat- Offshore Production (HOP) project from Dutch research out? t TNO, says forms for hydrogen production, pow- involving the OGTC, environmental that could mean electrifying offshore ered by renewable electricity, that also consultancy Aquatera, NOV, Doosan platforms, which is already happen- supports nearby marginal ? elds, and Babcock, Cran? eld University and ing in some places, but more could be done; connecting power users with generators, like wind farms and po- tentially opening up marginal ? elds in doing so, he told the Offshore Energy conference in Amsterdam, in October.

Another option is gas to wire, where natural gas is converted to electricity offshore, then sent by wire onshore.

While few options for this were found in the Dutch sector, says Peters, a UK

Oil & Gas Authority study last year found 16 potential projects that could be looked at in the UK North Sea.

A more viable option in the Nether- lands could be hydrogen production offshore, using natural gas and/or off- shore wind to power the process then transporting the hydrogen through the existing pipeline network.

Green and blue hydrogen

In fact, a two-year “green” hydrogen (make without use of fossil fuels) pilot project has been agreed, called Pos-

Hydon – a spin-out project from the

North Sea Energy public-private part- nership. From 2020, Neptune Energy, working with re-use group NexStep and TNO, is due to host a 1-mega- watt (MW) hydrogen electrolyser on its Q13a platform (the ? rst Dutch powered-from-shore facility) 13 kilo- meters (km) offshore. The hydrogen, electrolyzed from seawater, will then be blended with the gas and piped to shore in the existing pipeline, to pro- duce electricity. In future, this idea could be linked to offshore wind farms to help level out intermittency issues – i.e. instead of shutting wind farms

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