(Wunsiedel) – Construction work on a hydrogen production plant with a connected load of 8,75 megawatts begins in the Bavarian Wunsiedel energy park. Up to 1.350 tons of the gas can be produced there every year using solar and wind power. The electrolyzer is supplied by Siemens Energy. Its commissioning is planned for summer 2022.
The general contractor is Siemens Smart Infrastructure. Siemens Financial Services (SFS) is involved in the equity financing and has a 45 percent stake in the operating company WUN H2 GmbH. Other shareholders are Rießner Gase GmbH, also with 45 percent, and Stadtwerke Wunsiedel with ten percent. The environmental bank secures the financing as an external lender. The amount of investment was not disclosed.
The plan is to network with the lithium-ion battery storage system (2018 MW / 8,4 MWh) from Siemens, which has been on site since 10, as well as with neighboring industrial companies. These could use the waste heat or the oxygen split off during electrolysis.
In addition, according to the company, the hydrogen is delivered by truck trailer to customers in the regions of Upper Franconia, Upper Palatinate, Thuringia and Saxony as well as to nearby West Bohemia (Czech Republic). The system helps to defuse grid bottlenecks and make the power grid more flexible. An optional expansion later at the same location with a public hydrogen filling station for trucks and buses could also create an offer for CO2-free heavy goods traffic and local public transport.
A few days after the announcement of the construction work, Siemens published plans to install another large-scale storage facility (100 MW / 200 MWh) in Wunsiedel. When asked, the company stated that this had “no direct connection with electrolysis”.
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Projects in the Wunsiedel energy park / © Siemens
Editor's note: The article has been supplemented with the performance data of the existing battery storage and its commissioning and updated with the information on the second battery storage.
