Hydrogen Plant Being Built in New Mexico
Filed Under: Environmental News, Green Technology on August 5, 2009
It probably won’t be the first in the world (a Dutch plant will probably come online first), but a hydrogen power plant has broken ground in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It’s being built by Jetstream Wind and will supply enough power for about 6,000 homes (10 megawatts).
A modest start, to be sure, but the idea is sound. It’s not new or innovative, but it’s solid and hasn’t been done on a large scale before. The company, obviously, is a power company specializing in wind turbines. Their plan it to use wind and solar energy to create enough power to provide electrolysis to produce hydrogen from water.
The idea is simple and beautiful. Using a couple of wind turbines and a set of solar panels, the plant will provide enough electricity from those sources to power the electrolysis of water. If you put electricity through water, some of the water molecules (H2O) split, giving off hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O).
Capturing the hydrogen, the plant will then burn it in a gas turbine similar to what natural gas power plants use now. This turbine, of course, creates more electricity (apparently more than was used to create the hydrogen).
Hydrogen power plants aren’t new and there is one in Abu Dhabi right now and another in Ohio. The difference here is that renewable sources are creating power to split water and make the hydrogen. In the Abu Dhabi plant, natural gas is being used and in the Ohio plant, chlor-alkali waste hydrogen is being used.
The question is whether the plant will be as efficient as Jetstream claims it will be. I’m a little dubious about this. I would think it would make more sense to use a giant fuel cell rather than a gas-burning turbine to generate the power. Then the water could be recycled and used again, since fuel cells just give off H2O.
I’m not a scientist, though, and Jetstream believes in this enough to put their money where their mouth is. So there has to be something to it. Part of their income stream will come from excess hydrogen sales for vehicles and medical uses. That may be the real driving factor here. Another bonus to hydrogen versus wind/solar is the storage factor, since hydrogen can be stored indefinitely to be used for power production regardless of how much wind or sun there is. Intermittancy is one of wind and solar’s biggest weaknesses.
The project broke ground on July 4 and is in the pre-development stages for a possible two more plants in New Mexico as well. The new plant will be online sometime next summer. It employs 150 construction workers right now and will employe 30 to 35 maintenance and technical personnel after that.
The project is privately funded by unnamed sources. Jetstream Wind is based in Santa Fe, California.
For more information, visit TradingMarkets.com, and HydrogenCarsNow.com.
Related posts:
- Islands of Tonga Producing Hydrogen From Deep Water Windmills
- First U.S. Ocean Wind Farm to be Built off Rhode Island
- Greenland Project to Store Renewables With Hydrogen
Comments (2)
Like many others we played with Hydrogen for a lot of years and dollars. Never really felt safe getting into the vehicle.
Now we use 3 parts Hydrogen and one part Nitrogen and everything is fine and safe.
The machine makes the fuel and we use it in all forms of ground transport and now we do jets.
If something better comes along I will be first to support it.
Very interesting. For vehicles, though, a lot of new developments in H2 storage have changed the safety factors regarding it’s use as a portable fuel. Two of Japan’s automakers plan to have hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles available to the public by 2015 and Mazda is working with the Wankel Rotary Engine as a direct-burn engine with hydrogen. Suzuki also has an experimental HFC motorcycle.
Your idea sounds very interesting, though. I only took a quick look at your page, but AHM seems like something worth looking into. I’ll delve deeper when time permits. Thanks!