The potential for hydrogen to reduce curtailment of renewable energy in Scotland

In Scotland, wind energy is sometimes significantly higher than the transmission network’s capacity to transport the electricity to the rest of Great Britain. When this happens, payments are made to wind farms operators to compensate them for having to reduce their site’s power output to the level the network can absorb. This reduction is known as curtailment.

To prevent zero-carbon renewable energy going unused, curtailed energy could be an attractive source of electricity. It can reduce the overall cost of hydrogen production, through installing electrolyser units, which can utilise this power that would otherwise be curtailed. The hydrogen produced can then be used for a variety of applications, including industry, heat and transport.

This report looks at whether curtailed energy from large-scale renewables in Scotland could be used to produce hydrogen economically.