RWE and Kawasaki Heavy Industries began trial operations of a 34-megawatt hydrogen-compatible gas turbine at the Emsland power station in Lingen, described as Europe's largest of its kind and the first to generate electricity from hydrogen at industrial scale.
RWE and Kawasaki Heavy Industries have begun trial operations of a 34-megawatt hydrogen-compatible gas turbine at the Emsland gas-fired power station in Lingen, Germany. The two companies held a ceremony to mark the commissioning, attended by Olaf Lies, the Minister-President of Lower Saxony, and Mitsuko Shino, the Japanese ambassador to Germany, along with around 130 guests from politics, business and the media.
The turbine is the largest of its kind in Europe, according to RWE, and will generate electricity from hydrogen for the first time on an industrial scale. It can run on natural gas, hydrogen, or any mix of the two, and over the coming months the partners will test electricity generation using blends rising to 100 percent hydrogen, across a range of operating modes and load conditions.
The hydrogen for the trials comes from electrolysers at GET H2 Nukleus, located directly next to the plant, which split water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from renewable sources. The field trial is scheduled to run for several months, and the combustion systems are designed for safe and stable operation with varying proportions of natural gas and hydrogen, up to and including pure hydrogen.
The core facts are confirmed in RWE's own announcement, carried in full by energy-pedia and reported independently by OilVoice and H2Invest, which agree on the 34-megawatt size, the Lingen site, the 100-percent-hydrogen testing goal and the GET H2 Nukleus supply. The attendance of Lies and Shino and the guest count of around 130 come from the same announcement. The claim that the turbine will deliver up to ten times the output of hydrogen turbines tested to date comes from RWE Generation chief Nikolaus Valerius, quoted in the announcement, so it is the company's own comparison rather than an independent measurement.
The project is aimed at a practical problem in a power system built increasingly on wind and solar: flexible capacity that can keep the lights on when renewables cannot generate enough over a prolonged period. Hydrogen-compatible gas-fired stations are being designed to provide that backup, and RWE recently won a Federal Network Agency tender for flexible power stations. The technology was previously tested in 1-megawatt variants in Kobe, Japan, and is now being scaled up to the 34-megawatt class for the first time.
If the trials go well, the operating experience will feed into the design of larger hydrogen-capable turbines, which Valerius said could eventually supply hundreds of thousands of households. The trial itself is the near-term test: months of running on blends up to pure hydrogen will show whether variable hydrogen firing works as a repeatable power-station routine at this scale.
People Sentiments Public Mood: Positive
- RWE Generation chief Nikolaus Valerius said what has been achieved in Lingen is unique in Europe and the turbine will generate up to ten times as much power as previous hydrogen turbines
- Kawasaki's Motohiko Nishimura said the ceremony marks an important step toward a hydrogen-based society
- Lower Saxony Minister-President Olaf Lies said commissioning Europe's largest fully hydrogen-compatible gas turbine shows innovation being turned into concrete solutions