Mitsubishi Power Americas has selected Emerson to automate the world’s largest green H₂ production and storage facility. The industry-leading hub will help integrate renewable energy by producing and storing green H₂ for long duration energy storage. Mitsubishi Power will leverage Emerson’s H₂ production experience and automation software expertise to increase safety, decrease costs and simplify maintenance across the life cycle of the facility.

Excess renewable energy generated during the winter and spring is difficult and costly to store in its native state for use during the peak summer season and, as a result, is wasted. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub will use renewable electricity to power electrolyzers to produce green H₂. The produced H₂ will be stored underground in salt caverns so that it can be dispatched when required to generate clean electricity from H₂-fueled turbines, which will help stabilize the grid with sustainable sources and create a new pathway to decarbonization of the western U.S.

“Generating, storing and transmitting electricity with zero carbon emissions is critical to meeting the world’s sustainable power generation needs,” said Michael Ducker, senior vice president of H₂ Infrastructure for Mitsubishi Power Americas and president of Advanced Clean Energy Storage I. “Emerson’s H₂ expertise and digitally connected architecture design will help shorten time to start up, while also developing a safe, reliable and easily scalable transmission system to meet our goals for renewable energy production and storage.”

The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub will convert renewable energy through the 220-megawatt (MW) electrolyzer bank to produce up to 100 tpd of green H₂. The facility will have storage for 300 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy in two salt caverns. In comparison, the battery storage capacity across the United States is 2-GWh via lithium-ion batteries. The Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub has space for up to 100 caverns.

This first-of-its-kind integrated facility will provide short- and long-duration H₂ storage for use during peak seasons and throughout the year at the nearby 840-MW Intermountain Power Project (IPP Renewed). IPP Renewed will use 30% (vol) H₂ fuel in Mitsubishi Power M501JAC gas turbines at start up, transitioning to 100% (vol) H₂ by 2045. Emerson and Mitsubishi Power are collaborating on digital solutions for IPP Renewed to optimize plant performance, improve reliability and create cleaner, more reliable power.

“One of the most complex issues in power distribution is successfully managing variability of demand and supply to reduce stress on the grid,” said Bob Yeager, president of Emerson’s power and water business. “Mitsubishi Power has successfully leveraged the digital automation stack to develop an innovative, sustainable way to solve that problem, enabling providers to consistently use peak-production renewable energy in peak-consumption hours.”

Mitsubishi Power will use Emerson’s Ovation integrated control and safety platform to optimize the Advanced Clean Energy Storage hub’s production efficiency and help ensure safe operations. The Ovation platform will provide reliable control and monitoring of the renewable H₂ production process and emergency shutdown, fire and gas protection. The platform will also gather and contextualize data from the plant’s wide variety of third-party systems to help eliminate complexity and risk. Emerson’s PACSystems RSTi-EP I/O will provide easier field connectivity and help facilitate project changes without extending timelines or increasing cost, while AMS Device Manager will help monitor the health of plant assets to improve safety, reliability, efficiency and sustainability.