Turbine operation with 100% Hydrogen – The vision is becoming reality

There’s one question I am always asked: “What are Siemens Energy turbines currently capable of in terms of burning hydrogen?”. The first thing that comes to my mind is, how much green hydrogen do we have? The technology is not the issue.

We differentiate between “H2-ready” power plants, that will initially run on natural gas but are prepared to be retrofitted later to hydrogen operation, and “H2-capable” that already involves hardware for hydrogen combustion, be it co-firing of a certain amount, or even 100% hydrogen operation. ?Last week we have inaugurated Leipzig Süd, the world’s first power plant with an “H2-ready TüV certificate”. This combined heat and power plant is an important project on the way to decarbonizing the heat supply and ensuring energy security for the citizens of this large German city. ?

This is one of many projects Siemens Energy is working on to shape the energy transition and to help develop the entire gas turbine fleet for a hydrogen-based future. Not only here in Leipzig, but also with Kraftwerk Donaustadt in Austria where we demonstrated “H2-capability” by co-firing 15% hydrogen with natural gas into an existing 350MW power plant.

The highest discipline of 100% proven H2-capability has been demonstrated in the HYFLEXPOWER project in France. In a “world’s first” we operated an 11MW SGT-400 turbine with 100% hydrogen at a commercial plant. Learning about combustion dynamics and related combustion system design, integration of electrolyzer and hydrogen storage into the gas turbine instrumentation and control systems. These learnings, when scaled up to larger turbine frames, will open the potential for large-scale decarbonization of industry, power and heat generation.

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A power plant with two SGT-800 gas turbines, like the one in Leipzig, will save about 60 tons of CO2 per hour at 100% H2. Assuming an operating time of 4000 hours per year, this would result in a saving of 120,000 tons per year compared to natural gas.

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The targets are ambitious, the technology is available, it is time to scale up.

Many countries have ambitious decarbonization targets: The US and the EU want to be climate neutral by 2050, China is talking about 2060, and the German government is going as early as 2045, which means carbon-neutral power generation by 2035.

These are ambitious goals that will require massive additions of renewables and new hydrogen-capable gas-fired power plant capacity to ensure security of supply. Germany alone intends to be the first market in the world with significant installations of hydrogen-capable and 100% hydrogen power plants.

Achieving these targets means replacing coal-fired power plants and preparing gas-fired power plants for 100% hydrogen operation as soon as possible.

Today we’re showing that the technology is there to create a decarbonized future, the next step is to scale up the development of hydrogen infrastructure and create new business models which value capacity as much as it values the actual sale of electricity to ensure security of supply and grid stability while we decarbonize our energy ecosystem.