Hydrogen storage in wind turbine towers

Modern utility-scale wind turbine towers are typically conical steel structures that could also be used to store gaseous hydrogen in what we have termed a hydrogen tower. This paper examines potential technical barriers to this technology and identifies a minimum cost design. covered that hydrogen towers have a “crossover pressure” at which the critical mode of failure crosses over from fatigue to bursting. The crossover pressure for many turbine towers is between 1.0 and 1.5 MPa (approximately 10–15 atm). The hydrogen tower design resulting in the least expensive hydrogen storage uses all of the available volume for storage and is designed at its crossover pressure. An 84-m tall hydrogen tower for a 1.5-MW turbine would cost an additional $83,000 (beyond the cost of the conventional tower) and would store 940 kg of hydrogen at 1.1 MPa of pressure. The resulting incremental storage cost of $88/kg is approximately 30% of that for conventional pressure vessels.