New JV to Make Floating Wind Turbine for Integration with H2 Gen Plant

Lhyfe, a French pure hydrogen player, and DORIS, an integrated engineering and project management group that is experienced in offshore wind technology, are partnering to launch the “first floating wind turbine for integration with a hydrogen production system and identify larger-scale opportunities for their solutions.”

The announcement was made following a 12-month-long joint R&D programme focused on developing economically viable offshore green hydrogen production solutions.

The signing of the MoU by the two companies comes after Lhyfe’s Bouin production site in Vendée began producing the first few hundreds kilos a day of carbon-free green hydrogen. The operational knowledge gained from this world first will be employed to finalise the development of DORIS’ and Lhyfe’s proprietary solution NerehydTM, says the company.

The NerehydTM solution, which facilitates the integration of a hydrogen production facility into the floater of a wind turbine, could be deployed for on-grid or off-grid applications, from small-scale 10-megawatt wind turbines to large-scale wind farms with several hundred megawatts of capacity, claim the developers.

The budget for the project – including R&D and the production of the first prototype, due in 2025 – will be in the region of 60 million euros.

The two partners aim to:

• Finalize the solution’s design
• Overcome the main technical and economic obstacles
• Develop and finance a pilot project
• Identify target projects for industrial-scale deployment.

Xavier Grandiaud, Executive Deputy Managing Director of DORIS Engineering, said: “While we have no doubts that producing green hydrogen on land will be the first step in large-scale global development, we deeply believe in the need to move rapidly offshore to meet the strong demand ahead, which will require a massive amount of electricity. With Lhyfe, we believe that offshore production will be the best way to successfully produce large amounts of green hydrogen without impacting terrestrial landscapes or relying on an existing grid connection.”

Matthieu Guesné, CEO and founder of Lhyfe added: “We are delighted to be moving forward on our projects with DORIS. At Lhyfe, the reason we located our first production site near the ocean was to start producing in offshore conditions, because from day one we have been certain of one thing: offshore is the key to the massive development of renewable hydrogen.”

In addition to the joint development of NerehydTM, which is the partnership’s core focus, Lhyfe and DORIS will also be studying the possibility of extending the collaboration to other types of offshore hydrogen production solutions.