German technology firm Siemens Energy and British utility SSE have announced plans to jointly develop a massive 600MW turbine capable of burning 100% hydrogen by 2030.
If realised on time, the hydrogen-capable version of Siemens’ 593MW-rated SGT5-9000HL gas turbine is set to be the largest hydrogen turbine in the world.
The “multi-million-pound” collaboration between the two companies, announced yesterday (Monday), will see Siemens Energy build new facilities at its Clean Energy Centre in Berlin to test the new technology on its large gas turbines.
The goal of the so-called “Mission H2 Power” programme is to deploy the new turbine at SSE’s existing 840MW Keadby 2 gas-fired power station in north Lincolnshire, in England’s East Midlands, which is currently fitted with the standard gas-fired SGT5-9000HL gas turbine.
A spokesperson for Siemens Energy told Hydrogen Insight that up until now, all its tests for 100% hydrogen-powered turbines have been on smaller-sized models.
This includes the 15MW-rated SGT-400 the company successfully tested in October 2023, making it only the second company to burn 100% H2 in a gas turbine.
However, it is “too early in the process” to speculate on whether Siemens Energy and SSE’s 100% hydrogen turbine technology would be the largest in 2030, the spokesperson noted, adding that the tests on the smaller turbines continue.
The news comes as the UK government announced plans to subsidise hydrogen-powered generation for the first time, including allowing it access to the country’s capacity market auctions.
SSE, in partnership with Norway’s Equinor, ultimately plans to convert all 1.8GW of the Keadby power station to operate on hydrogen, which could meet over half of the 3.5GW of the hydrogen-powered capacity SSE suggests that the UK will need.
It will be possible to burn either fossil gas or hydrogen, or any blend of the two, in the turbine, Siemens Energy and SSE said, to allow for “flexibility in the event of delays to the hydrogen infrastructure”.
“It isn’t enough for developers to simply talk about an ambition to transition from gas to hydrogen — delivering a clean power system requires bold action, which is why we’re entering into this collaboration with Siemens Energy, a long-standing partner of SSE,” said Finlay McCutcheon, managing director of SSE Thermal.
“We know hydrogen-fired power stations will be an essential element of the energy mix in a net zero world and Mission H2 Power will help us accelerate their deployment through engineering excellence.”
