Proyecto de viabilidad de Power-to-Gas: Producción de gas natural sintético en Manaure, La Guajira – Colombia

Abstract

The interest in renewable gases has increased at present, due to the decrease in the construction costs of solar photovoltaic and wind power plants, which today allows these two sources to have greater penetration in the energy mix, and the installation of larger projects and their complementarity with Power-to-Gas technology to take advantage of surplus electricity generation. This project was deals with the techno-economic analysis of a hybrid plant that combines wind and solar photovoltaic technology to generate renewable electricity, which will be converted into green hydrogen through the electrolysis of water, to finally produce synthetic natural gas (SNG) and its injection into the Guajira node gas pipeline. The wind farm and the photovoltaic solar farm were sized according to the characteristics and potential of the renewable resource of the municipality of Manaure - La Guajira (Colombia), in order to determine the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for a hybrid wind-solar system, the capacity factor is in the range 44 – 48%. Lastly, the Power-to-Gas plant was sized to operate 12 hours a day, since PtG facilities require many hours of full load and economical renewable electricity, therefore a capacity utilization of at least 3 000 – 4 000 hours / year is required due to the high fixed cost. The project site, using conservative data, allows 4 236 hours / year of work for the Power-to-Gas pilot plant units, equivalent to 11.6 hours / day with electrical energy from the wind farm and 1 590 hours / year of operation using only electricity from the solar PV farm; this allows the Department of La Guajira, due to its abundant renewable energy resources, to be attractive for the production of green hydrogen and synthetic fuels in the medium and long term, considering the fall in electrolyzer costs towards the 2050 horizon