How much money can be made by an electrolyser providing balancing services to the grid? Haeolus researchers have recently published an article detailing just that, and there are some unexpected results.
The article has been published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy and is available from this link (open access).
One of the main results is that the profitability of grid services varies a lot among countries: in particular, it is not so good in Norway (where Haeolus itself is located…) because of the predominance of fast-controllable hydro power, but improves in countries with slower generators (coal, nuclear, etc.) and is expected to rise with further adoption of wind and solar.
In all cases except Norway, however, the value of hydrogen not produced in order to provide grid services is significantly higher than international price targets, and in a few cases even higher than current market value.
This allows hydrogen producers to invest in more electrolyser capacity to stimulate demand, while still generating some profit from these new electrolysers even if customers for the hydrogen have not materialised yet.