Enel Inaugurates World’s First Hydrogen-Fueled Power Plant

Italy’s Enel on Monday inaugurated its hydrogen-fueled combined-cycle power plant at Fusina, near Venice. The €50 million project, the first industrial-scale facility of its kind in the world, uses 1.3 metric tons of hydrogen per hour to generate 60 million kWh a year of electricity as well as heat. It reportedly has an overall efficiency of about 42%.

The Fusina hydrogen plant has a capacity of 12 MW and is located on the site of Enel’s 960-MW coal-fired Andrea Palladio plant at Fusina, next to the petrochemical facility of Porto Marghera. The hydrogen-fueled process also sends high-temperature steam to the nearby coal-fired plant for an additional 4 MW of power capacity, Enel said.

According to Enel, the plant is just one project under the aegis of Hydrogen Park, a consortium formed in 2003 on the initiative of the Venice Industrial Union, which has received about €4 million in funding from the Region of Veneto and the Italian Ministry for the Environment. The consortium seeks to promote the development and implementation of hydrogen technologies in transportation and electricity generation in the Porto Marghera area.

Sources: Enel, POWER