I will tell you a little about how intriguing things can get while participating in POY. From Year 1, every student enrolled in Master’s in Sustainable Energy Systems (SELECT) programme participates in POY. During this process, EIT InnoEnergy’s selected industrial partners for this course engage the students in a specific real-life challenge within the organisation. This challenge encourages student collaboration and problem-solving skills while receiving insightful feedback from the company and project supervisors. With this project, each student will gain hands-on experience on a specific topic and work experience with an organisation. It can either lead you on a path of determining whether or not this is your niche. I believe this because recently, I have become fascinated by learning more about my project ‘Green Hydrogen’ at each stage.

My project of the year is related to the feasibility study of setting up a Green Hydrogen plant within Europe, and this entails doing some technical and market research, financial analysis, building your problem-solving skills while learning from each of your team members their strengths, learning on improving some of your weak spots either how to do desk study to draw out insightful knowledge, communicate and collaborate within a team. The project work is assigned to you  based on skills and experience. Regardless of the project work assigned, I guarantee you will enjoy the ride ahead. Early on in the project, we were given a timeframe to come up with an idea, and after careful consideration, Green Hydrogen was chosen as the solution.

 

At the very beginning, before setting out to write on this, I promised not to bore you a lot with so much technicality and what our findings are all about, but if you stick with me to the very end, I am sure you will learn about the juice part.

Fascinatingly, I like to define this fuel as a chemical energy storage mechanism that aims to solve one technical challenge related to grid stability due to incorporating renewable energy technology into the electricity generation market. Some of this challenge is known as electricity curtailment, although it is not the only potential or purpose of Green Hydrogen, which is what my project is dealing with. Green Hydrogen is defined as X. This project aimed to look for a solution to reduce the amount of electricity that would have gone to waste during an expected overgeneration. Using the merit-order curve analysis to address this: due to the unpredictability of renewable energy technology (RET), either solar or wind, the electricity supply is shut off to avoid surplus and overloading the grid.

 

Power utility companies that generate their electricity through renewable energy technology and sell to the grid can face losses. To avoid this losses: Green Hydrogen can be a possible solution, but the next challenge is how much would it cost and how feasible is the business.

As I promised not to keep you on this post for too long, I am sure you can find a lot of information on the internet about power plant sizing, electrolysis specifications, storage mechanisms, distribution, and market participants. Rather still, hydrogen has been a hot topic under the EIT InnoEnergy Community webinar series called ‘H2 Series,’ which is yet another way to hear directly from experts in the field.

If you are just starting out in the field of sustainable energy, my recommendation may be best for you. Apply to be one of our Master’s students through the EIT InnoEnergy body. There is a lot you can learn in a short period of time; it may not be Green Hydrogen, but it may be something else that speaks directly to you. You are only a click away from learning more about the application process and curriculum that may interest you.

 

On that note, I’ll end with a soft chat and hope to see you soon!