Identification and Assessment of Risk Factors in Offshore Wind-Integrated Hydrogen Production Systems

Green hydrogen production through water splitting is a clean energy intensive process that intakes fresh water and electricity from renewables and emits oxygen as a sole byproduct. Recently, due to soaring fossil fuel prices and highly concerning climate change effects, green hydrogen has acquired increasing attention as a potential to decarbonize hard-to-electrify industries and support the growth of renewables. At offshore conditions, water is freely available from seawater, however, appropriate desalination and deionization is necessary to reach the water quality of conventional electrolysis. Additionally, electrolysis plant can be connected to offshore wind farm to transfer (fraction of) its power into hydrogen for storage to be used as fuel or converted back to electricity by means of fuel cell.

In current work, we are seeking to identify the risk factors involved in offshore wind-integrated centralized green hydrogen production system. Risk factors can be related to the technology, economics, safety and security, environment and logistics. Technology risks involve (i) technological and commercial readiness related risks, (ii) availability of resources, (iii) operation risks related to electrolyzer stack operating conditions (e.g., intermittent power, gas crossover, membrane degradation, etc.), water treatment operating conditions (e.g., SWRO membrane fouling), and most importantly risk from hydrogen transportation and storage (e.g., hydrogen leakage, contamination, embrittlement, etc.), and (iv) control related risks. Economics risks involve the factors that determine the economical validity of the whole process. Such risks can be related to (i) capital and operating costs, (ii) macro-economic such as inflation and interest rate risks, and (iii) regulations related to taxation policies such as Investment Tax Credit (ITC) and Production Tax Credit (PTC). Safety and security of the operations and processes is determined by the frequency of accidents and cyber-security breaches and the resilience of the system towards such hazards. Environmental risks involve (i) ecological sensitivity effects from procedures such as desalination wastewater disposal, and (ii) natural hazards such as hurricanes, pandemics, heavy rain, and high seas. Logistical risks mainly involve risks that arise during transporting personnel, supplies as well as during emergency response. In the current work, a thorough investigation has been performed to identify the risk factors as well as their contextual interrelationships, followed by a quantitative analysis of these factors, which yields an estimate of the overall project risk. The current work will be a key decision-making tool for decision-makers to establish offshore water electrolysis-based hydrogen production plants.