Mitsubishi Power Americas, which is creating reputedly the world’s largest green hydrogen production and storage facility near Delta, Utah, has selected Emerson to automate the new facility. The ‘industry-leading’ hub will help integrate renewable energy by producing and storing green hydrogen for long-duration storage. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub will solve the a problem inherent in storing energy produced during the winter for use in the high demand summer months by using renewable electricity to power electrolysers that produce green hydrogen. The hydrogen will be stored underground in salt caverns to help stabilise the grid with sustainable sources, and create a new pathway to decarbonisation of the western United States.
The hub will convert renewable energy through a 220 MW electrolyser bank to produce up to 100 tonnes of green hydrogen per day, and will have storage for 300 GWh of energy in two salt caverns. By way of comparison, the battery storage capacity across the United States is 2 GWh via lithium-ion batteries. The hub has space for up to 100 caverns.
This hydrogen storage can be used during peak seasons and throughout the year at the nearby 840 MW Intermountain Power Project (IPP Renewed) site undergoing conversion from coal to gas firing. IPP Renewed will use 30% (by volume) hydrogen fuel in Mitsubishi M501JAC gas turbines at start-up, with the intention of transitioning to 100% by 2045.
Emerson and Mitsubishi Power are collaborating on digital solutions for IPP Renewed to optimise plant performance, improve reliability and create cleaner, more reliable power.
The system in use will be Emerson’s ‘Ovation’ control and safety platform, as well as its PACSystems I/O controller and AMS Device Manager monitoring, to ‘optimise the hub’s production efficiency and help ensure safe operations’ by providing control and monitoring of the renewable hydrogen production process and emergency shutdown, fire and gas protection. The platform will also gather and contextualise data from the plant’s wide variety of third-party systems.
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