Mexico – The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) Expects its Green Hydrogen Plant to Start Producing Clean Fuel in 2023, Company Officials Revealed

Mexico – The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) expects its green hydrogen plant to start producing clean fuel in 2023, company officials revealed.

In an exclusive interview with Bloomberg Line , the corporate director of Strategic Planning, Guillermo Arizmendi Gamboa, explained that the objective of the renewable pilot project is to reduce imports of US gas.

More than 50% of the electricity production of the National Electric System comes from plants that use imported natural gas.

The company experienced a shortage crisis that resulted in power outages for 4.7 million homes in 27 states in the country during February 2021, after a winter storm that paralyzed Texas, the main fuel supplying region. Thanks for staying up to date with Hydrogen Central.

Paulina Montañez Sentíes, member of the Strategic Planning Department and in charge of the Department of Studies of the CFE Wholesale Electricity Market.

We hope that from 2023 to 2024 at least this pilot plant will be in operation , however, we are considering a long-term projection where there is a solid strategy with the implementation of green hydrogen technology.

Hydrogen as a fuel is a thing of the past. This energy put humanity on the moon aboard the spacecraft, Apollo, in 1969.

It is used commercially in oil refineries, but the process to obtain the most abundant element in the universe without polluting the environment requires a chemical process called electrolysis, which separates oxygen atoms from hydrogen with renewable electricity.

The Baja California entity is the company’s first choice to install the plant. There it would receive renewable energy from its Cerro Prieto photovoltaic plant or from the solar plant that the company intends to build in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, the largest in Latin America.

The green fuel would be sent to the Presidente Juárez thermoelectric plant in Baja California.

CFE will start the project using 5% hydrogen and the remaining 95% with natural gas at the plant, but technicians consulted by Montañez indicated that some CFE turbines can use up to 20% hydrogen.

When asked about the investment amounts, the official replies that the project is still in the technical and economic analysis stage, but one of its financing options is the Clean Energy Trust (Fiel) , created by the company in December 2021.

“We continue to analyze the necessary budget,” he mentioned.

The electrolyzer is one of the main pieces of equipment in a hydrogen plant, which requires investments of “millions of dollars,” according to the company representative.

A CFE document seen by Bloomberg Line details that the company has been studying since May 2021 the use of electrolyser equipment, located in the Lerma Thermoelectric Power Plant in the state of Campeche, for possible use in the pilot project, which require repairs and replacements of mechanical and electrical components.

The CFE representative ruled out using mass storage and transportation of green hydrogen through gas pipelines in the first stage of the plan.

Water use in a region with drought

The main difficulty of the project is the water needed to obtain the gaseous fuel, because it must have specific characteristics that meet the quality for the process without damaging the equipment, such as salt in the case of seawater.

Baja California is a state that is facing a severe drought for more than six months in the central area and a moderate one for less than a semester in the peripheral area of ​​the entity, according to the Mexico National Water Commission’s drought monitor ( Conagua) to January 15, 2022.

Lorena Espinoza, technical advisor to the German Society for International Cooperation in Mexico (GIZ for its German acronym) mentioned that 55 kilowatt-hours (kWh) and nine liters of water are needed to produce one kilogram of green hydrogen.

“In this first viable option, the amount of water necessary for a small production of green hydrogen is already contemplated,” added Montañez.

Energy security or business?

Since his administration began, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has criticized solar and wind energy in the hands of the private sector for being expensive and putting the reliability of the country’s electrical system at risk due to its intermittence and lack of planning of the previous government.

In the midst of a war of declarations with private initiative, enriched by a constitutional reform initiative in Congress to give control of the sector to CFE, the Mexican government is trying to rehabilitate hydroelectric and geothermal plants, in addition to building the solar project in Sonora.

Sandra Bucio, in charge of the economic analysis and demand sub-management in the CFE corporate planning department, recalled that GIZ published a document with the potential of green hydrogen for Mexico with the most profitable and fast-adopting sectors, with special sections for CFE and Pemex.

The demand for green hydrogen in Mexico for large industries, such as cement and mining companies, would create a market of US$700 million per year by 2050 , according to the document from the German agency.

Officials ruled out a collaboration with the private initiative for the project, but are working with the National Institute of Electricity and Clean Energies (INEEL) and the Electric Power Research Institute of the United States (EPRI, for its acronym in English).

The institutional alliance tries to fine-tune the details of the project and measure the generation capacity in tons with this technology in order to scale it to other company plants and reduce the growing demand for natural gas towards the 2050 horizon, according to Arizmendi.

“Green hydrogen must be the counterpart that reduces it,” concluded the manager.

Exclusive: CFE’s green hydrogen plant will start operations in 2023, January 31, 2022