Longji, the world's largest photovoltaic company, has entered the field of "photovoltaic hydrogen production".
On March 31, the industrial and commercial registration showed that Xi'an Longi Hydrogen Technology Co., Ltd. was successfully registered on the same day. The shareholders were Xi'an Longi Green Energy Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Zhuqueying Private Equity Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership), founder of Longi Co., Ltd. , CEO Li Zhenguo personally served as chairman and general manager, of which Xi'an Longi Green Energy Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of Longi Co., Ltd.
Coincidentally, following Longji, Baofeng Energy, a listed company with a market value of 100 billion in the coal chemical industry, has also entered the field of "photovoltaic hydrogen production". On the evening of April 18, Baofeng Energy announced that the company plans to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in Ningdong, Ningxia with its own capital of 1 billion yuan, and use solar power to produce "green hydrogen" for chemical production, realizing new energy substitution Fossil energy reduces coal consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
In fact, Longji and Baofeng Energy are not "crab-eaters" in domestic photovoltaic hydrogen production. Prior to this, Sungrow, JinkoSolar, Datang Group, Elion Resources, Great Wall Motors, etc. have all expressed and actually set foot in photovoltaic hydrogen production, taking "green hydrogen" as an important strategic layout for their business diversification and transformation.
Under the upsurge of "carbon peak and carbon neutrality", hydrogen energy, as one of the important directions of the country's energy transition, has attracted the attention of the government and the market. As the world's largest renewable energy power generation country, China has a natural advantage in hydrogen production from renewable energy, including photovoltaic hydrogen production, and it may usher in explosive development during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
is popular because of double cleaning
Hydrogen energy, as a green energy with abundant reserves, high calorific value, high energy density, and diverse sources, is known as the "ultimate energy" in the 21st century and the most promising secondary energy in the 21st century.
Hydrogen is widely distributed in the universe, and it constitutes 75% of the mass of the universe; hydrogen energy is the energy released by hydrogen in the process of physical and chemical changes; hydrogen has various sources, which can be produced from fossil fuels or electrolyzed water; hydrogen combustion The product is water, which is the cleanest energy source in the world. Except for nuclear fuels, the calorific value of hydrogen is the highest among all fossil fuels, chemical fuels and biofuels, three times that of gasoline, 3.9 times that of alcohol, and 4.5 times that of coke.
Hydrogen energy is highly valued by countries all over the world. The United States, Japan, Australia and other countries have formulated relevant policies to list hydrogen energy as an important part of the country's clean energy.
In the outline of my country's "14th Five-Year Plan", hydrogen energy and energy storage are listed as one of the six future industries of forward-looking planning. Up to now, more than ten provinces and municipalities directly under the Central Government have issued special policies for the hydrogen energy industry, and more than 40 cities and counties have issued policies related to the hydrogen energy industry.
From the perspective of the industrial chain, the hydrogen energy industry includes four links: hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, hydrogen transportation, and hydrogen use. Among them, hydrogen production is the most basic link in hydrogen energy.
At present, hydrogen production technologies are mainly divided into hydrogen production from fossil energy, industrial by-product hydrogen, and hydrogen production from renewable energy by electrolysis of water. The hydrogen energy based on the aforementioned different technical sources is called "gray hydrogen", "blue hydrogen" and "green hydrogen". .
Among them, the hydrogen production from coal in the hydrogen production from fossil energy is currently the mainstream hydrogen production technology in my country. Although the cost is low, its carbon dioxide emissions are large, and it is an unrecognized route in the current environment of energy saving and carbon reduction; hydrogen production from fossil energy Another technology of China-natural gas hydrogen production is the international mainstream hydrogen production technology. Although it is cleaner and lower carbon than coal hydrogen production, its cost is relatively high. Coupled with the relative shortage of natural gas resources in China, it is not a technology suitable for China. Route: Industrial by-product hydrogen is mainly dependent on the main product, the cost cannot be fully controlled, and the production capacity is also limited by the main product, and can only be used as an auxiliary source of hydrogen energy.
Renewable energy electrolysis of water for hydrogen production is considered to be the mainstream hydrogen production technology in the world and China in the future. One of the core pain points of this technology is that the technology is not mature yet and the cost is relatively high. According to relevant research data, the cost of hydrogen production from renewable energy by electrolysis of water is 20-40 yuan/kg, which is several times the cost of hydrogen production from coal at 9.9 yuan/kg.
On April 18, Zhang Yuzhuo, Chairman of Sinopec, pointed out on the CCTV dialogue program: "At present, more than 96% of gray hydrogen is gray hydrogen, and it is developing in the direction of blue hydrogen. In the future, green hydrogen will become the main scene and the main scene. This basically depends on it. cost."
Research shows that 85% of the production cost of hydrogen production from electrolysis of water comes from the cost of electricity. According to research by Zhou Xiaoxin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, “when the price of photovoltaic electricity is below 0.3 yuan per kilowatt-hour, the cost of hydrogen production is similar to that of natural gas, so solar photovoltaic hydrogen production is very promising.”
At present, the cost per kilowatt-hour of photovoltaic power generation in most parts of the country has dropped to 0.3 to 0.4 yuan, and in some areas such as Qinghai, it has dropped to 0.2 yuan. This shows that photovoltaic hydrogen production is very close to the ability of natural gas to produce hydrogen. With the decline in the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour, the turning point of photovoltaic hydrogen production is approaching.
From the perspective of industrial synergy, photovoltaic hydrogen production can not only solve the energy source problem of hydrogen production with photovoltaic power generation that cannot be consumed on the Internet, but also become an energy storage medium with a higher energy density than chemical energy storage. Days, weeks and months of long-term energy storage are used to solve the problems of daytime imbalance and quarterly imbalance encountered in photovoltaic power generation. In the future, photovoltaic plus energy storage may become the ultimate solution for clean power.
Chunjiang warm, new players gather
Chunjiang plumbing duck prophet, in fact, domestic and foreign companies have already deployed photovoltaic hydrogen production.
In foreign markets, on March 7, 2020, Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Toshiba Energy Systems and Solutions, Tohoku Electric Power Corporation and Iwatani Corporation held the opening ceremony of the Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Project (FH2R) . The FH2R project started in Namie in July 2018, and completed the construction and trial operation of a 10-megawatt hydrogen production unit at the end of February 2020. The 10-megawatt electrolyzer unit can produce up to 1,200 cubic meters of hydrogen per hour. The world’s largest photovoltaic hydrogen production plant covers an area of 220,000 square meters, of which photovoltaic power plants cover an area of 180,000 square meters, and R&D and hydrogen production facilities cover an area of 40,000 square meters.
Looking at the domestic market again, as early as 2018, Longi began to pay attention to and deploy hydrogen production from photovoltaic power generation. In the past three years, it has conducted in-depth cooperation with well-known scientific research institutions and authoritative experts at home and abroad. Technology accumulation has been formed in fields such as photovoltaic hydrogen production.
At the same time, as the largest photovoltaic inverter company in China, Sungrow established a dedicated hydrogen energy business unit in 2019, and cooperated with the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences on advanced proton exchange membrane electrolysis of water hydrogen production technology, renewable energy and electrolysis. In-depth cooperation in the integration of water and hydrogen production and the optimization of hydrogen production systems.
Sungrow is one step ahead of Longji shares in the implementation of the project. In July 2019, Sungrow signed a 300 MW photovoltaic and 50 MW hydrogen production comprehensive demonstration project in Yushe County, Jinzhong, Shanxi; in September 2019, a 200 MW photovoltaic power generation project (Phase I) in Tunliu District, Shanxi Province Commencement and the second phase of the 500 MW photovoltaic hydrogen production project officially landed.
At the same time, after Sungrow Power, Baofeng Energy also launched a photovoltaic hydrogen production project. The company launched a comprehensive application demonstration project of 200 MW photovoltaic power generation and 20,000 cubic meters per hour of electrolyzed hydrogen production in 2019. Some projects have been completed and put into production in early 2021, and the hydrogen and oxygen produced are directly sent to chemical plants. , To realize the replacement of fossil energy with new energy.
After 168 hours of continuous standard operation and commissioning of the project, the estimated comprehensive cost can be controlled at 1.34 yuan/cubic meter, which is equivalent to the cost of hydrogen production from natural gas. At the same time, the company calculated that the cost of photovoltaic power generation was only 0.121 yuan/kWh when depreciation funds were used for investment and its own funds did not count interest. The corresponding hydrogen cost was about 0.7 yuan/cubic meter, which was 0.6 yuan/cubic meter from the current coal hydrogen production cost. Cubic meters are close.
In 2020, JinkoSolar and Air Products (China) Investment Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The two parties have launched cooperation in the field of photovoltaic new energy, combining "hydrogen production" with "green power".
In August 2020, in order to improve the development layout of China Datang Group's new energy power generation on-site hydrogen production industry, the 6MW photovoltaic on-site hydrogen production technology demonstration project carried out by Yungang Thermal Power Company as the specific project undertaker settled in Datong City, Shanxi Province . As an important support for Datang Group's major technological innovation and an important research platform for large-scale hydrogen production from renewable energy, the project is progressing in an orderly manner.
In February 2021, Elion Resources Group, the parent company of Elion Clean Energy, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Jingneng Group. The two parties will carry out in-depth cooperation in new industries such as photovoltaic hydrogen production.
Bai Yunfei, industrial research director of Longji shares, publicly stated that photovoltaic power generation has become the world’s most economical clean energy, and its cost per kilowatt-hour continues to decline. The low cost of photovoltaic power generation has brought cost reductions to hydrogen production from electrolyzed water. Chance. If sufficient and economical photovoltaic power is used to produce "green hydrogen", the application scale of hydrogen energy can be continuously expanded, and the goal of carbon reduction and decarbonization in countries around the world can be accelerated.
Therefore, in order to promote the development of photovoltaic hydrogen production, my country needs to explore a path to reduce the cost of "green hydrogen", in which electricity price is the decisive factor in the reduction of the cost of "green hydrogen". The Orange Society Research Institute, a third-party professional consulting organization for hydrogen energy research, recommends that relevant national authorities take the opportunity of fuel cell vehicle demonstration and application, based on national energy security and domestic large-scale recycling development strategy, to issue a preferential electricity price policy for hydrogen production from renewable energy. It is understood that currently only Guangdong, Sichuan and other places provide preferential electricity price policy support for renewable energy hydrogen production projects.
