Under the background of global accelerated carbon neutrality, hydrogen energy as an excellent clean energy has been paid more and more attention. On July 9, 2023, the reporter learned from the Three Gorges Group that China's first 10,000-ton new energy hydrogen production project - Inner Mongolia Ordos City Junge Banner Narisson photovoltaic hydrogen production industry demonstration project (hereinafter referred to as Narisson project) successfully produced hydrogen.

Hydrogen energy is a key medium to break down the existing industry sector barriers in the energy sector and achieve deep integration between different forms of energy, helping to achieve large-scale deep decarbonization in transportation, industry and buildings.

At present, the hydrogen energy industry has gradually entered the fast track of development. China is the world's largest hydrogen producer, with a yearly hydrogen production of about 33 million tons, but most of the hydrogen produced from fossil fuels is gray hydrogen. The green hydrogen obtained by electrolytic water hydrogen production through photovoltaic power generation, wind power and other new energy accounts for a relatively low proportion. How to promote the development of new energy hydrogen production industry has increasingly become the focus of the industry.

In March 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the "Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Hydrogen Industry (2021-2035)", proposing to build a clean, low-carbon and low-cost multi-component hydrogen production system in the future, focusing on the development of renewable energy hydrogen production, and strictly controlling hydrogen production from fossil energy sources.

According to incomplete statistics, in the first three quarters of 2023, more than 40 green hydrogen projects have been launched across China, mainly in areas rich in scenic resources such as Inner Mongolia and Ningxia.

Narisson Project is the first batch of solar hydrogen production integrated demonstration projects in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which is jointly constructed by China Three Gorges New Energy (Group) Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as Three Gorges Energy) and Manshi Investment Group Co., LTD. The project will use the coal-mining backfill to build photovoltaic power stations with an annual output of about 740 million KWH, of which 20 percent will be directly transmitted to the local grid and the remaining 80 percent will be used for hydrogen production. The project installed 15 sets of 1000 standard square per hour alkaline water hydrogen production equipment, with an annual output of about 10,000 tons of hydrogen and about 80,000 tons of by-product oxygen, mainly used in chemical and transportation fields.

The Narisson project will efficiently and closely combine the two clean energy sources of solar energy and hydrogen energy, use the green electricity produced by solar energy to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen through the electrolytic device, and solve the problem of power balance and consumption of high proportion of renewable energy connected to the grid by exploring a new model of pollution-free and zero-emission green electricity hydrogen production.

In order to ensure the safe and stable operation of the power grid, the Narjison project uses a large-scale insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) power supply to replace the traditional thyristor. This is the first large-scale use of 10,000 ampere-level IGBT power supply as an alkaline electrolytic cell rectification power supply in the global green electricity hydrogen production industry, which can make large-scale hydrogen production more friendly to the grid, and the comprehensive conversion efficiency of the system is higher, which has a leading demonstration role in the technological development of domestic hydrogen production power supply. Three Gorges energy technology and economic center associate researcher Ji Mengbo said.

The successful hydrogen production of Narisson project will accumulate valuable experience for the scale and commercial development of China's green hydrogen production, help China to improve the overall level of hydrogen energy production - storage - transport - use industry chain, and make more contributions to the economic and social green development of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Editor/Xu Shengpeng