Hydrogen

What’s the latest with burning hydrogen at gas plants?

Natural gas-fired plant operators have made strides with hydrogen co-firing efforts in recent years, but obstacles related to supply and infrastructure remain.
What’s the latest with burning hydrogen at gas plants?
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Let’s get this out of the way: Burning hydrogen as an alternative to natural gas in turbines is not new.

GE, for example, has older units with more than 100,000 hours working with hydrogen fuels. Siemens Energy has been using hydrogen in various applications for over four decades.

As the power sector works to decarbonize, the idea of burning hydrogen in gas turbines and engines seems promising. When combusted alone, hydrogen does not produce CO2 emissions. Even hydrogen-natural gas blends reduce a plant’s carbon footprint and increase system flexibility.

However, the industry is years away from burning hydrogen at scale for decarbonization. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) said in a recent report that for at least the next 10 years, any “hydrogen-capable” gas-fired power plants are going to operate almost completely, if not entirely, using natural gas.

But the biggest obstacles to hydrogen firing in gas turbines are less technical and have more to do with the challenges of building new infrastructure and ramping up hydrogen supply.

Regarding supply, the U.S. produces about 10 million tons of hydrogen every year, nearly all of which is consumed in the petrochemical and fertilizer sectors. Any hydrogen co-firing in the power sector would require a lot of new production, even despite legislation offering significant incentives for hydrogen production in the U.S.

Just running the 15 largest natural gas combined-cycle (NGCC) plants with hydrogen would require doubling current U.S. production and would replace less than 10% of the electricity now generated annually from natural gas, IEEFA said in its report, Hydrogen: Not a solution for gas-fired turbines.

Hydrogen pilots and projects

Despite these challenges, a handful of U.S. natural gas-fired plant operators have made strides with hydrogen blending pilot studies in recent years.

This includes testing cofiring hydrogen at existing plants. Some operators have successfully tested using fuel blends made up of as little as 5% to as much as 44% hydrogen.

The 485 MW Long Ridge Energy Generation Project in Ohio burned a blend that included 5% hydrogen by volume in March 2022.

In September 2022, the New York Power Authority’s Brentwood power plant co-fired a blend of natural gas starting at 5% and reaching 44% hydrogen by volume in its 47 MW peaking unit. According to NYPA, the co-firing process showed a CO2 reduction of approximately 14% when hydrogen made up 35% of the natural gas stream.

In June 2022, Georgia Power’s McDonough power plant co-fired blend up to 20% hydrogen in one of its 233 MW natural gas turbines. The utility said the test released 7% fewer CO2 emissions compared with burning natural gas alone.

Other operators have turned to upgrading their turbines to use blends of natural gas and hydrogen.

Duke Energy plans to upgrade the 74 MW DeBary simple-cycle peaking plant in Florida to generate electricity solely from hydrogen.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is considering upgrading Scattergood Generating Station Units 1 and 2 to have the capability of cofiring 30% hydrogen by December 2029, and potentially increasing to 100% if and when it is feasible to do.

Finally, there are three natural gas-fired plants under construction whose operators say will have the capability to co-fire hydrogen.

In Louisiana, Kindle Energy plans to build the 678 MW Magnolia Power Plant, which it expects to enter service sometime in 2025. Kindle Energy says thee plant could co-fire up to 50% hydrogen.

In Texas, Entergy is building thee 1,158 MW Orange County Advanced Power Station, which it expects to begin operating by mid-2026. We’ve previously reported that the plant, which would use Mitsubishi Power equipment, could burn up to 30% hydrogen.

However, the most notable new project might be an 840 MW plant being built by the Intermountain Power Agency in Utah. The project will replace an 1800 MW coal-fired plant. LADWP, which has the largest stake in the combined-cycle plant, said the new plant will be able to burn a mix of 30% hydrogen and 70% natural gas.

We’ve reported extensively on this new plant, which is tied to Advanced Clean Energy Storage Hub (ACES Delta Hub) in Delta, Utah. ACES is a large-scale clean hydrogen facility designed to produce, store, and deliver green hydrogen.

The hub will initially be capable of converting 220 MW of renewable energy into almost 100 metric tons per day of green hydrogen, which will then be stored in two massive salt caverns, having a storage capacity of more than 300 GWh of dispatchable clean energy.

The joint project is being led by Mitsubishi Power and Chevron U.S.A. Inc.’s New Energies Company (formerly Magnum Development). The hydrogen produced from electrolysis and then stored in the salt caverns will be fired in the 840 MW combined-cycle plant, which will be equipped with two Mitsubishi Power J-series gas turbines.

The project is expected to be ready in 2025.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration has a handy primer on the complete number of existing hydrogen pilots and upcoming projects.

Conclusion

Overall, while interest remains from power sector stakeholders in burning hydrogen in gas turbines, it is unclear how widespread this use case will be.

There are plenty of skeptics. IEEFA, for example, said terms like “hydrogen ready” or “hydrogen capable” amount to little more than marketing terms designed to obscure the challenges of hydrogen co-firing.

The institute also noted that along with supply challenges, no pipeline network exists to distribute the fuel to hydrogen-capable gas turbines being proposed in the U.S. IEEFA said building such a network would take years and cost billions of dollars, and the time and effort required for this buildout would slow the transition from fossil fuels.

In its final power plant rule targeting coal-fired and new natural gas-fired plants released earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed hydrogen co-firing as a best system of emission reduction (BSER), instead leaning primarily on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

EPA said this was prompted by cost uncertainties and concerns shared during the public comment process leading up to the final rule.

“While the EPA believes that hydrogen co-firing is technically feasible based on combustion turbine technology, information about how the low-GHG hydrogen production industry will develop in the future is not sufficiently certain for the EPA to be able to determine that adequate quantities will be available,” the agency said.