HyExperts I:

HyAllgäu 

Project description

The district of Oberallgäu is the southernmost district in Germany and includes the city of Kempten. The area features alpine and pre-alpine terrain and is of particular tourist interest. With around 42 overnight stays per inhabitant (over 9 million overnight stays in 2019), the economic impact of tourism on the region is high. Nevertheless, the economic structure is heterogeneous and characterised by predominantly medium-sized enterprises. Overall, these contribute the largest share to the gross added value. The region has an extremely precious, biodiverse natural space and this is highly prized by the inhabitants. This results in a strong environmental awareness and a pioneering role in climate protection, which was demonstrated, for example, by the participation in the 100% Climate Protection Masterplan (Masterplan 100%{10fa2557b41e852a1d0f28b5eec2f77c9c2a507c8c22bae7aafda37f2b93945d} Klimaschutz) funding programme, in which a total of only about 40 municipalities in Germany were accepted. Two of them being Kempten (2012) and the Oberallgäu (2016).

In the Allgäu region, the electrification of rail transport is being pursued as part of the energy and mobility transition. Since the construction of overhead lines is too costly in the foreseeable future, this is to be done by trains powered by renewable hydrogen, ideally from the region. 

With the ‘HyAllgäu – Economic and Regional Production of RE-Hydrogen’ (‘HyAllgäu – Wirtschaftliche und regionale Gewinnung von EE-Wasserstoff’) project, the project team plans to enter the hydrogen technology market. With the sewage treatment plant’s electricity surplus of at least 2 GWh/a, a minimum of 30 t of hydrogen can be produced per year. This electricity in particular is very suitable for the economic production of hydrogen, as it is generated constantly throughout the year. This makes it possible to compensate for the economic disadvantages of volatile electricity generators and avoid grid charges.”

HyAllgäu is a preliminary stage of a large-scale hydrogen production project to supply energy and transport applications with regional renewable hydrogen resources. The first step is to identify as many sites as possible for the economic production of renewable hydrogen. Realistic locations would be a large sewage treatment plant or a waste incineration plant. Other decentralised locations could also be considered or, through the option of a virtual power plant, a bundling of different energy flows. The demand in the region is being determined for the desired realisation of the production of RE-hydrogen. For this purpose, regional public transport fleets are considered as examples, as are selected commercial enterprises. Roadmaps will be drawn up for the project planning of filling stations at strategic long-distance transport hubs. The potential study will be accompanied by scientific support and public relations work.

The overarching goal is to develop an overview (“source/sink register”) of production facilities and consumers. A comparison enables a decision to be made as to whether decentralised or centralised production makes more sense. The source/sink register later ensures demand-oriented production and economic utilisation of future investments and forms the basis for further decisions.