Research services

Description

The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is seeking to appoint a contractor (or contractors) to collate and assess a range technical evidence on the hydrogen supply chain and develop a modelling tool that can analyse the costs of hydrogen infrastructure. The main aim of this project is to improve our current understanding of the technical-infrastructural requirements, and associated energy system costs, for a transition towards a reliance on low carbon hydrogen to meet the demand for heat. This will involve (1) collating and assessing the evidence base and (2) developing a modelling tool. The primary focus of this work will be to assess hydrogen infrastructure evidence for heat in the residential, commercial and industrial sectors. The tool should also be able to incorporate the appropriate functionality to allow it to model geographical demands. Collation and critical assessment of evidence and project management. 1.1 In order to develop an effective hydrogen infrastructure model, the project will need to assess and collate the existing evidence for the possible hydrogen supply chains to provide us with the best, most recently available data. First, this will require an exercise to collate the most recent evidence together in one place for ease of use. This evidence needs to be assessed by the contractors, to understand the uncertainty around the evidence at each part of the supply chain. 1.2 An important part of this project will be to peer review the hydrogen evidence being used. The contractor will need a group of key members from industry and academia, at minimum, this should include representatives from the gas distribution networks. 1.3 LOT 1 will also encompass an important project management role between BEIS and the hydrogen supply chain technical evidence and modelling tool project. 2.1 This project will incorporate this available evidence into a modelling tool — either developing an existing modelling tool or creating a new tool. To be able to answer questions within the ITT the model will require: —A high level of temporal detail that is able to capture intra-day demand swings in order to model the impact of fluctuating demand on storage capacity and other associated hydrogen infrastructure. —A high level of spatial detail. This will remain unspecified. We expect a contractor to make a case for adopting their chosen level of spatial detail (or levels of detail) and why it would be best suited to this project. —A comprehensive representation of the relevant technologies, provided by the prior evidence collation and assessment exercise The different heat demands will be provided to the contractor by BEIS analysts. This will include annual demand and peak demand. Inter-regional transport and hydrogen for power demands will also be developed.