South Australia plans build the world’s most ambitious green energy project, the world’s largest hydrogen power plant powered by an electrolysis plant. By partnering with Tesla to build the world’s first major battery manufacturing plant, the state has already established itself as a global leader in energy storage.
However, the new project overshadows all the previous ones, as the South Australian government intends to fully fund the construction of a hydrogen power plant worth 600 million Australian dollars.
South Australia wants to be a world leader in hydrogen energy.© hydrogen.sa.gov.au
The plant will generate a large amount of hydrogen, and in the evenings or in winter it will run this hydrogen back through the generator set and return energy to the grid. The system will absorb excess renewable energy from the grid and run it through a massive 250 MW electrolysis plant, 10 times more than any existing electrolysis plant in the world.
However, this system has significant drawbacks – it is inferior in power to lithium batteries, and hydrogen is very difficult to store. However, the plant will be very useful as a back-up network during an extended energy drought. In addition, the government intends to supply excess hydrogen to a number of other companies wishing to use it in the transportation industry, steel production and other projects. Whether this idea will be crowned with success will become clearer by 2025, when the plant should open.