The Limits of Offshore Wind and Hydrogen Production

Live Webinar, Wednesday, May 13th at 8:00am PST. Offshore wind energy promises to reach 4,000 full-load hours or more. It is a great match for green hydrogen production, as electrolysers need to be operated as many hours per year as possible. A new study commissioned by Agora Energiewende has analysed offshore wind expansion scenarios for Germany and scrutinized the assumption of 4,000 full-load hours.

How many full-load hours can offshore wind effectively reach in the German North Sea at very high installed capacity densities?

To answer this question, the Technical University of Denmark and the Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry simulated interaction effects between wind farms and the atmosphere. They used two physically-based methods of very different complexity to get to the same insight: The more intensely offshore wind energy is being used at increasingly larger scales, its full-load hours are likely to decline. This requires better resource potential estimation methods and planning approaches.
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• Matthias Deutsch works at Agora Energiewende, an independent think tank, and concentrates on power and heat sector coupling, as well as on storage, including hydrogen.
• Axel Kleidon uses thermodynamics to quantify natural energy conversions within the Earth system and applies this approach to understand the natural limits of renewable energy.
• One of Jake Badger’s goals is to accelerate developments for the application and dissemination of meteorology modelling and datasets in wind energy community, and to strengthen co-development and collaboration across specializations to deliver novel research and innovation.