This project is a collaborative project between WWU and Cadent, which looks at the early technical development of a hydrogen village in the North West of England. The hydrogen production is being made available from the HyNet’s hydrogen production units within the Stanlow oil refinery, making this area potentially ideal to develop a hydrogen village trial.
This project looks at hydrogen production and resilience options, network configuration, end user appliances, commercial and regulatory implications of developing a hydrogen project in this the North West. This project will act as the forerunner to more in depth engineering studies should the decision to progress the project be taken.
This project sits alongside NIA FI-0002 HyNet Understand Phase (consumer).
Benefits
This project will facilitate the energy system transition by eventually enabling a hydrogen village to be trialled, as described in the UK Government’s 10 Point Plan.
In a net zero society, natural gas will no longer be combusted for heat as it emits CO2 which can accelerate climate change, as a result alternatives must be found to natural gas and one of these options could be hydrogen subject to its safe transportation and utilisation being adequately demonstrated. This project looks at a high level options for the hydrogen trial in a domestic setting. This is a necessary demonstration which aims to show hydrogen as a leading technology to decarbonise heat.
Learnings
Outcomes
The outcome of this project manifested itself in the bid to Ofgem and BEIS on the 17th December to BEIS.
A summary of findings is described below:
WPA Hydrogen Production: A large source of available hydrogen was found within Stanlow Refinery, which is owned and operated by Essar UK Ltd. This source of hydrogen is produced today and is burnt inside boilers but can be diverted to meet the needs of the hydrogen village if required. WP A also looked in detail at the resilience of the supply and found other beneficial sources of hydrogen, which will add resilience and green credentials to the refinery supply.
WPB Network: This work package identified a suitable network to host the trial. This network meets a number of considerations including
a. Only minor modifications need to be made to make it hydrogen ready
b. It is not too far from the hydrogen production point
c. The pipeline routing is feasible
d. There is sufficient space for an AGI both upstream and downstream of the MP Pipeline.
e. The wider network can be maintained on natural gas if the HVT network is isolated and converted to hydrogen.
WPC Regulation and Commercial: This WP focussed on the options for billing the consumers in the HVT. It made an assessment of the work being undertaken within H100 and whether this could be used for the HVT, alongside an assessment with regards to at what point a new billing regime would need to be implemented. It also looked at what changes would need to be made within regulations and legislation such as the Gas Act. Via this WP it was found that the multiplication method SGN proposed on using could be potentially used but had limited scope after a village.
WPD Safety Case: This work package assessed deliverables that need to be considered when looking at how a safety case should be developed for the hydrogen village. The output was that during Stage 2, three quantitative risk assessments will need to be delivered encompassing in the home, the network and the upstream AGI. A report was produced that looked at previous QRA strategies and how this learning can be brought forward into the village.
Lessons Learnt
This project had several interfaces that had to managed alongside the wider HVT feasibility study projects, this predominately included interface with consumer research and stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder and consumer research became work packages 6 and 7 to ensure that they were fully aligned with WPs 0-5.
It was feedback from WP6 Stakeholder that informed the decision to leave the original location within the Northwest and find an alternative location nearby.
The interfaces were managed through good project management and governance, ensuring that information was passed from work package to work package in a coordinated way and any information that the work packages were uncovering was passed to WP0 for further consideration and strategic decisions could be made, if necessary. This is the key learning point from this project as integration happened well and by the end of the project was finely tuned, enabling a strong basis for subsequent phases of the project.
