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

Abstract

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 is known as curtailment. This report looks at whether future volumes of curtailed energy from large-scale renewables in Scotland could be used to produce hydrogen economically.