FIRST H2 POWER PLANT, FAR FROM THE H2 ECONOMY

Enel: First Hydrogen-Fuelled Power Now On Line In Venice; New 100% hydrogen-fuelled generation plant at the Fusina power plant successfully up and running, Hydrogen pipeline now in service between the power plant and Polimeri Europa
August 14, 2009 (Enel)

"Two landmark events have been achieved at Enel’s hydrogen-fuelled power plant near Venice. Just a few days after the new hydrogen pipeline supplied by Polimeri Europa (ENI) went into service, the power plant has successfully begun generating power fuelled 100% by hydrogen.

"The people of Venice are the first in the world to benefit from power generated by the world’s largest industrial-sized “zero emissions” power plant: Enel’s 100% hydrogen-fuelled plant at Fusina."

Schematic of a hydrogen power plant. The Enel project uses H2 industrial byproduct but to supply significant scale power, a plant would have to use fuel to make H2 and it is uniformly more efficient to use the fuel to make electricity. (click to enlarge)

"…[O]fficially opened in April 2008…Initial testing of the turbine… in the spring of 2009 and now - after the completion of the special pipeline - the plant has switched to 100% hydrogen fuelling…No plant of this type had ever even been [put electricity onto the grid] before. The combustor was specifically developed exclusively for this project by Enel’s Research team, in partnership with General Electric Oil & Gas…

"The Fusina hydrogen plant has a capacity of 12 MW, as well as an additional 4 MW generated through re-use of heated gas produced by the hydrogen-fuelled turbine in the existing coal-fired plant…[about 60 million kWh a year, sufficient to meet the needs of 20,000 households and avoid more than 17,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions a year]…[T]he hydrogen used to fuel the Enel power plant is [produced as a by-product in the manufacturing process at the adjacent petrochemical facility of Porto Marghera (Venice) and] provided by the Polimeri Europa cracker (ENI), which utilizes hydrogen to run its own plants…"

As long as they're dreaming, why not dream of carbon capture and sequestration? It's just as inefficient, prohibitively expensive and unachievable at utility scale. (click to enlarge)

"The plant is just one project under the aegis of Hydrogen Park, a consortium formed in 2003 on the initiative of the Venice Industrial Union with about 4 million euros in funding from the Region of Veneto and the Ministry for the Environment. The consortium seeks to promote the development and implementation of hydrogen technologies in transportation and electricity generation in the Porto Marghera area.

"The 'Andrea Palladio' plant stands as a symbol of Enel’s commitment and determination to meet the challenge of generating abundant electricity at competitive costs, while at the same time respecting the environment…[It is also pioneering the use of] RDF (refuse-derived fuel), a fuel obtained from separated solid waste…Not only does this recover the energy contained in the waste, it avoids sending the waste to landfill sites."