Irish company seeks approval for wind project with electrolyser

The firm’s application is for the construction and operation of a 13-turbine wind farm and associated site development works in County Mayo, as well as a hydrogen electrolyser plant and associated site development works in County Sligo.

The project was submitted directly to Ireland’s planning authority, An Bord Pleanála, in last month when the country also published a national hydrogen strategy.

In its application, the firm referred to the country’s Climate Action Plan, published in June 2019, which called for “decisive and urgent action” and said its proposal would support it by helping reduce emissions in hard-to-abate sectors such as transport and the ‘high heat’ industry. 

The wind project will have an installed capacity of 78MW. The electrolyser will eventually be scaled up to a maximum 80MW capacity to meet demand for green hydrogen in the Irish market, producing up to 31 tonnes of green hydrogen per day utilising the full wind farm output.

The smallest initial electrolyser capacity will be 10MW, and will produce a maximum of 4t/d of green hydrogen, leaving up to 68MW of the wind farm’s installed capacity to dispatch energy to the electricity grid.

The application says the project will contribute 0.05-0.39TWh of green hydrogen towards the Climate Action Plan targets of 2.1TWh consumption of zero-emission gas for industrial heating and up to 0.7TWh of renewable gas to decarbonise residential heating.

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