At World Hydrogen North America 2023 in Houston, Texas, Eliecer Viamontes, President and CEO of Entergy Texas, delivered a presentation titled "Debating the use case for hydrogen to decarbonize the power sector." The presentation focused on the challenges of integrating hydrogen (H₂) into power facilities.

Entergy Texas services nearly 500,000 customers across 27 counties in Texas, attempting to balance stakeholders' affordability, reliability and sustainability needs. Although H₂ has several net-zero benefits, various barriers to its integration exist—for example, H₂ embrittlement, which may require dedicated H₂ pipelines at scale.

H₂ embrittlement is the corrosion of solid metal's (e.g., pipelines) structural properties due to H₂. According to Viamontes, successful demonstrations of H₂ blending have achieved up to 12 vol%–15 vol%, and to achieve 100% H₂, dedicated pipeline infrastructure may be required.

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) greatly incentivized green H₂ production. According to Viamontes, green H₂ is still above the delivered cost of natural gas, even with the IRA. A large portion of this cost is transportation and storage, which will be the main component of the cost competitiveness of green H₂.

The U.S. has 1,600 miles of H₂ pipelines, and 90% are in the Gulf Coast region. H₂ storage in solution-mined caverns can provide utility-scale, long-duration energy storage to support grid integration of renewable energy generation and H₂ fuel management. There are four H₂ storage caverns worldwide, three in the U.S. and two in the Entergy Texas service territory.

Viamontes said there is strong customer interest in developing H₂ in southeast Texas. He is projecting the production of 2,300 tpd of H₂ by 2030, generating nearly 5.4 GW of new industrial load in the region. Entergy Texas is developing the Orange County Advanced Power Station to provide more reliable, lower-cost and cleaner energy in Southeast Texas, intending to co-fire H₂, leverage existing infrastructure and adapt to future decarbonization policies.

Story by: Tyler Campbell, Managing Editor, H2Tech