B9 Energy Storage, on behalf of a project consortium comprising Mutual Energy, Islandmagee Energy and Net Zero Technology Centre, was awarded £986,000 funding as part of the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Longer Duration Energy Storage (LODES) innovation competition. This was the only LODES award to a Northern Ireland based applicant and the only Power-to-X project in the UK to be funded for stream 1, phase 1 activities, which included a 12-month FEED study (Front End Engineering Design). A concise summary of the project is as follows:

The objective of this internationally significant project was to produce demonstrably green hydrogen and oxygen from renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The project would have deployed a 20MWe electrolyser at Ballylumford, Larne in Northern Ireland, to provide longer duration electrical balance for wind energy that would otherwise go unused (curtailment).

The hydrogen was to be distributed in a dedicated transmission pipeline and stored underground in a local salt cavern system for later use as carbon free fuel in both the transport and power generation sectors. The latter application involved firing trials of a relocated 20MWe Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) typically used for electricity generation on oil and gas platforms and oil refineries. We expected to see successful fuel switching reach >70vol% H2 blend in natural gas.

Further firing trials of the OCGT module, operating in the part loaded condition, increasingly seen during wind farm curtailment episodes (inefficient), was to be carried out with oxygen being added to combustion air to assess the benefits of Oxygen Enhanced Combustion on OCGT fuel efficiency. This technique could have a significant impact on reducing carbon intensity levels of the Electricity Market.

Results from the project would have helped inform future electrolyser deployment at GW scale, allow curtailment free connection of offshore wind farms at Ballylumford and help define effective security of supply solutions for the net zero era.

Unfortunately, projected delays in grid connection dates made the financial close of such a project fall outside the allowable window specified by the government and therefore the project could not proceed as planned.