WGHI Brief | Clean Hydrogen and Grid Reliability: Overview of Potential Use Cases and Considerations for States
Clean hydrogen has a potential role to play as states aim to reduce emissions in the electric sector.
Developed by the Western Green Hydrogen Initiative (WGHI), this brief provides an overview of the benefits and challenges associated with clean hydrogen for two specific electric sector use cases — long-duration energy storage (LDES) and microgrids — with the aim of aiding state leaders in evaluating clean hydrogen initiatives as part of their statewide planning efforts.
This brief also focuses on elucidating key use cases of clean hydrogen for informed consideration. Key use cases may include hydrogen for LDES and fuel cells for microgrid applications.
Further, as hydrogen is deployed to meet these use cases, the electrolyzers constructed to produce hydrogen can be leveraged as a flexible load for grid balancing. To enable these applications of hydrogen, states can undertake three key efforts that are outlined in this brief.