Green hydrogen production at sea

Producing hydrogen and fuels autonomously at sea using green offshore electricity from wind energy: This was the driving vision behind the hydrogen flagship project H₂Mare at its inception in 2021. Around 30 partners from industry and science have conducted intensive research on the fundamentals and the development of the necessary technologies. After four and a half years of research on offshore production of green hydrogen and other power-to-X products, they presented their findings at a high-profile closing conference. "H₂Mare has proven that innovative technologies are not just a thing of the future," said Dr. Silke Launert, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology, and Space, during the event.

University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Industrial Automation and Software Engineering (IAS) and the Institute of Energy Economics and Rational Energy Use (IER) are participating in the research project. They are involved in the H₂Mare subproject PtX-Wind on process automation and optimized operational management. The goal is to ensure reliable and economical operation of the off-grid system, including teleoperation without on-site personnel. Among other things, the project involved the development of a digital twin – a virtual copy of the real installations. "With the digital twin, IAS is setting new standards in the monitoring and control of offshore power-to-X plants, opening up new possibilities for remote maintenance and teleoperation toward autonomous operation of the facilities,” says Prof. Michael Weyrich.

While chemical production plants for energy carriers such as ammonia, methanol, or conventional fuels traditionally operate continuously at high capacity, wind power generation is subject to significant fluctuations. The IER developed a system for optimal operational management that addresses this challenge using predictive and stochastic approaches. In addition to a plant model, the system uses forecasts for weather and power generation data, taking into account the uncertainties associated with these predictions and the natural fluctuations of wind power. Prof. Kai Hufendiek emphasizes that this methodology lays the foundation for future production platforms: "This makes the technology globally scalable, as it is independent of power grids."

H₂Mare (funding period: April 1, 2021, to December 31, 2025) is one of three hydrogen flagship projects supported by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR) as a central contribution to implementing the National Hydrogen Strategy. Together with the project H₂Giga, which focuses on the further development of electrolyzers; and TransHyDE, which investigates researches new storage and transport solutions for hydrogen, the offshore project H₂Mare forms the largest funding initiative of the Federal Ministry of Research on the topic of the energy transition. These projects provide a decisive impetus for Germany’s entry into the hydrogen economy.

Power-to-X technologies
"Power-to-X" refers to technologies which convert electricity from renewable energy to other energy carriers such as hydrogen, synthetic fuels, or heat. This allows, for example, the production of sustainable fuels for transport and industry, raw materials for the chemical sector, or heat for buildings. “Power-to-X” is a collective term, where the placeholder X represents the different energy carriers or raw materials.