French start-up unveils plans to make hydrogen from wind

French green hydrogen start-up Lhyfe is to open the world's first wind-powered hydrogen production facility. The company announced its unique solution for hydrogen production at the same time as it announced that it had raised €8-million from investors.

Lhyfe plans to build an electrolyser to extract hydrogen from water that is powered by eight turbines. The site for the demonstrator plant is earmarked at Bouin, around 50 km (31 miles) southwest from Nantes on the French Atlantic coast. The site is owned by the local council which is one of three authorities in the Vendée region to have invested €3-million in the plan.

“This is the first time an industrial-sized electrolyser will be powered with  100% renewable energy," the start-up's founder, Matthieu Guesné, told Windpower Monthly.

The company will also construct an R&D centre and offices on a 4,000 m² site. Construction is scheduled to begin in the next few months and should be completed by early next year.

The Nantes-based company aims to produce hydrogen by splitting water molecules and to sell it at about the same price as petrol or diesel. By 2021, the company hopes to be producing 1,000 kg a day, to be delivered initially to the nearby town of La Roche-sur-Yon, where a hydrogen station will be installed to fuel buses and refuse collection vehicles. The company hopes other towns in the Vendée will also adapt vehicles to use the fuel.

If the plant is successful, Lhyfe plans to offer it as a modular turnkey solution that can be powered by all forms of renewable energy.

In the future, the company intends to produce hydrogen from offshore wind projects. Guisné said: “The idea is to have small dedicated offshore wind projects, about 50km from the coast where they cannot be seen and where wind is constant.”

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