Project description

Within EDP, both EDP NEW R&D and EDP Inovação joined forces and experience to work together on this project. EDP NEW is the BEHYOND project Coordinator and responsible for its exploitation plan. Moreover, EDP NEW is involved on several tasks throughout the project, namely the strategic market assessment of the offshore wind-hydrogen economy, definition of the operational models and business cases and risk assessment towards bankability and industrialization. EDP Inovação is responsible for managing the BEHYOND project and is leading several tasks, namely the strategic assessment of the market, the definition of business cases, and the assessment of the innovation needed to make offshore wind-to-hydrogen solutions market-ready.

Objectives

BEHYOND is the genesis of a broader program that is being negotiated within the Consortium aiming at prototyping and implementing a pilot project to test, validate and improve the technology with a vision to placing it in the market. Consequently, the main objectives of BEHYOND are:

• The engineering project of an offshore hydrogen production module (electrolysis) and corresponding infrastructure using the electricity generated at offshore wind farms during curtailment,
• To create an innovative system to face the increasing challenges of the energy sector, namely the growth of renewables’ penetration in the power system, which are highly intermittent and dependent on market based revenues,
• To offer a solution to wind farm owners by increasing the competitiveness of offshore wind tenders, ensuring access to a new, affordable, reliable and sustainable energy vector 
• To increase the share of hydrogen in the final energy demand to enlarge the low-carbon energy sources share in the global energy mix and promote the environmental sustainability. 

EDP NEW scope

The BEHYOND project, promoted by EDP NEW, fits in the ocean renewable energies and hydrogen energy vector and its main motivation is to contribute to the decarbonization of the economy and to the blue growth in Europe and Portugal in particular. Moreover, the project will give to the partners and to the promoter important competitive advantages by promoting the emergence of a unique and innovative technological offer. This offer will pioneer the emerging value chain of the hydrogen energy vector in the context of the blue economy providing the developers with first-hand access to the technology solutions. 

In addition, the BEHYOND project represents an important starting point for Portuguese companies to position and take a leading role within the emerging hydrogen market. Hydrogen constitutes the opportunity for Portuguese research centers and academia to add relevant competencies to their highly-qualified knowledge portfolio. The work to be developed under BEHYOND scope will allow the Portuguese research centers involved to offer innovative services and consultancy to external engineering companies. Finally, this is also an opportunity for strengthening the collaboration and relationship between academia, research centers and national and international companies.