Offshore hydrogen “energy islands” could save Germany €4 billion per year – report

Building “energy islands” in the North Sea to produce green hydrogen using 20 gigawatts of offshore wind power can save Germany billions of euros, according to a report by the Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology (Fraunhofer IEE).

“Germany can achieve annual savings of up to €4.3 billion ($A6.4 billion) by establishing offshore hydrogen production on two energy islands,” the Fraunhofer report says.

It says these islands would be connected to 10 gigawatts offshore capacity each, located around 150 kilometres from shore with a limited connection to the power grid. The report was commissioned by Copenhagen Energy Islands, a company dedicated to the development of such energy islands.

The cost advantages are in comparison to a scenario whereby all the offshore wind electricity is fed into the mainland power grid for the hydrogen production.

“The savings are primarily driven by reduced grid buildout costs, especially cables from the coastline to the centre of Germany,” as well as higher utilisation of high voltage direct current (HVDC) cables, the report said, adding that producing hydrogen offshore is more efficient than onshore because of lower energy losses and less grid buildout requirements.

The report looked at the construction of islands that are connected to the mainland only via a hydrogen pipeline and a scenario that added a limited grid connection.

The researchers found that adding a limited grid connection to other offshore wind farms’ converter platforms brings cost benefits because “in times of low offshore wind and high solar PV generation, connecting the [offshore energy islands] on the electricity side can make it possible to convert the surplus solar PV electricity into hydrogen.”

At times of low renewable supply and high electricity prices, offshore electricity can be fed into the grid. “This increases flexibility of the overall energy system, creating positive system effects,” Fraunhofer IEE said.

The Internet Archive’s Fight to Save Itself

If you step into the headquarters of the Internet Archive on a Friday after lunch, when it offers public tours, chances are you’ll be greeted by its founder and merriest cheerleader, Brewster Kahle.

You cannot miss the building; it looks like it was designed for some sort of Grecian-themed Las Vegas attraction and plopped down at random in San Francisco’s foggy, mellow Richmond district. Once you pass the entrance’s white Corinthian columns, Kahle will show you the vintage Prince of Persia arcade game and a gramophone that can play century-old phonograph cylinders on display in the foyer. He’ll lead you into the great room, filled with rows of wooden pews sloping toward a pulpit. Baroque ceiling moldings frame a grand stained glass dome. Before it was the Archive’s headquarters, the building housed a Christian Science church.

I made this pilgrimage on a breezy afternoon last May. Along with around a dozen other visitors, I followed Kahle, 63, clad in a rumpled orange button-down and round wire-rimmed glasses, as he showed us his life’s work. When the afternoon light hits the great hall’s dome, it gives everyone a halo. Especially Kahle, whose silver curls catch the sun and who preaches his gospel with an amiable evangelism, speaking with his hands and laughing easily. “I think people are feeling run over by technology these days,” Kahle says. “We need to rehumanize it.”

It is no exaggeration to say that digital archiving as we know it would not exist without the Internet Archive—and that, as the world’s knowledge repositories increasingly go online, archiving as we know it would not be as functional. Its most famous project, the Wayback Machine, is a repository of web pages that functions as an unparalleled record of the internet. Zoomed out, the Internet Archive is one of the most important historical-preservation organizations in the world. The Wayback Machine has assumed a default position as a safety valve against digital oblivion. The rhapsodic regard the Internet Archive inspires is earned—without it, the world would lose its best public resource on internet history.

I have visited and done some work with the Internet Archive in the past. I fully support them and their goal of preserving works and making them accessible.

Via Violet Blue's Cybersecurity Roundup: October 1, 2024