Mitsubishi Power selects Emerson Software and Technologies for hydrogen hub

Mitsubishi Power Americas, Inc. has selected Emerson to automate the world’s largest green hydrogen production and storage facility.

Mitsubishi Power will leverage Emerson’s hydrogen production experience and automation software expertise to increase safety, decrease costs and simplify maintenance across the life cycle of the facility.

Excess renewable energy generated during the winter and spring is difficult and costly to store in its native state for use during the peak summer season and, as a result, is wasted. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub will use renewable electricity to power electrolysers to produce green hydrogen.

The produced hydrogen will be stored underground in salt caverns to be dispatched when required to generate clean electricity from hydrogen-fueled turbines, which will help stabilise the grid with sustainable sources and create a new pathway to decarbonisation in the western US.

The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub will convert renewable energy through the 220-megawatt (MW) electrolyser bank to produce up to 100 tons of green hydrogen per day. The facility will have storage for 300 GWh of energy in two salt caverns. In comparison, the battery storage capacity across the United States is 2-GWh via lithium-ion batteries. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub has space for up to 100 caverns.

This first-of-its-kind integrated facility will provide short- and long-duration hydrogen storage for use during peak seasons and throughout the year at the nearby 840-MW Intermountain Power Project (IPP Renewed). IPP Renewed will use 30% (vol) hydrogen fuel in Mitsubishi Power M501JAC gas turbines at start up, transitioning to 100% (vol) hydrogen 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.

Michael Ducker, senior vice president at Mitsubishi Power Americas, said, “Emerson’s hydrogen expertise and digitally connected architecture design will help shorten time to start up while also developing a safe, reliable and easily scalable transmission system to meet our goals for renewable energy production and storage.”

Bob Yeager, president of Emerson’s power and water business, said, “Mitsubishi Power has successfully leveraged the digital automation stack to develop an innovative, sustainable way to solve that problem, enabling providers to consistently use peak-production renewable energy in peak-consumption hours.”

Mitsubishi Power will use Emerson’s Ovation™ integrated control and safety platform to optimise the Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub’s production efficiency and help ensure safe operations. The Ovation platform will provide reliable 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 to help eliminate complexity and risk. Emerson’s PACSystems™ RSTi-EP I/O will provide easier field connectivity and help facilitate project changes without extending timelines or increasing cost, while AMS Device Manager will help monitor the health of plant assets to improve safety, reliability, efficiency and sustainability.