The OYSTER project consortium — ITM Power, Ørsted, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, and Element Energy — has been awarded €5 million ($6 million) in funding from The Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH2-JU) under the European Commission to demonstrate and to investigate the feasibility and potential of combining an offshore wind turbine directly with an electrolyzer and transporting renewable hydrogen to shore.
The consortium will develop and test a megawatt-scale fully marinized electrolyzer in a shoreside pilot trial. The project will be coordinated by Element Energy.
The project is planned to start in 2021 and run to the end of 2024.
The electrolyzer system will be designed to be compact, to allow it to be integrated with a single offshore wind turbine, and to follow the turbine's production profile. Furthermore, the electrolyzer system will integrate desalination and water treatment processes, making it possible to use seawater as a feedsto
