Hydropower to Hydrogen – a case analysis

Detl Jan
5AAT

Romanczyk Mikolaj
5AAT

Wurm Johannes

Hydrogen, a new trend in the future? The company Global Hydro Energy, which builds and sells hydro-powerplants all around the globe, came up with the idea for the following work. Because not existing infrastructure or missing civilisation are reasons for unused hydropower potential.
The thesis consists of the following components: theoretical study, subprojects, calculations of economic viability

Theory:
The theoretical part is a summary of the nowadays used technology for hydrogen production, storage, compression and transport. This part also includes explanations of similar projects, which are already built or are planned to be build, as well as a list of possible hydrogen consuming industries. Through precise research and interviewing companies of such industries, future intentions of them regarding Hydrogen were determined.

Subprojects:
The main focus of the thesis is a hydro-powerplant from Global Hydro in Kyrgyzstan which economic viability for hydrogen production was calculated. Additionally, a comparison between crypto-mining and hydrogen was made.
A different project is for a smaller company, which has hydro and sun power available. For this project, the same calculations have been done, the difference being a way smaller powerplant. Furthermore, alternative possibilities regarding storing energy are listed, which could be from financial interest for the company.

Calculations of economic viability:
The data for the calculations has been provided from the individual project-companies. Moreover other scenarios like selling hydrogen, consuming it itself or transforming it back to electric power have been made throughout the calculations.