Europe’s first offshore H2 pilot saw electrolyser performance ‘as high as on land’

French developer Lhyfe has announced results of its pilot floating offshore hydrogen platform, which was tested for six months in the Bay of Biscay, 20km off the coast of Le Croisic in northwestern France, until mid-November last year.

The “Sealhyfe” project was the first to produce hydrogen offshore in Europe, although China’s Dongfang Electric had beaten Lhyfe to the world-first title by a matter of weeks.

Lhyfe noted that its 1MW proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser, which was supplied by Plug Power, was operated “including at maximum production capacity” of 400kg per day, while managing the variability from the project’s 2MW Vestas offshore wind turbine (mounted on BW Ideol’s Floatgen substructure).

“The performance achieved was as high as on land, confirming the reliability of the installation,” the developer said in a press release. It also confirmed to Hydrogen Insight that Plug’s electrolyser had a working range of 10-100%, meaning that it could produce H2 when the electricity input was as low as 10% of its nameplate capacity (ie, 100kW).