Namibian president inaugurates eleven 120-metre met masts at landmark 3GW green hydrogen project

The developer behind a landmark 3GW green hydrogen project in Namibia has installed ten new 120-metre weather-measurement masts (alongside a pre-existing one) at the project site, which were yesterday inaugurated by the country’s new president Nangolo Mbumba.

While scores of gigawatt-scale green hydrogen projects have been announced around the world in recent years, very few have gone beyond the design stage, making Hyphen Hydrogen Energy’s campaign to measure wind and sunshine levels something of an outlier in the sector.

Hyphen’s snappily named Green Hydrogen Project is due to be powered by about 7GW of onsite wind and solar power, with a view to making two million tonnes of green ammonia a year, mainly for export.

The $10bn project — which has already been allocated land by the government — will be a major development for sparsely-populated Namibia, which only has a GDP of about $12bn.

The new meteorological (met) masts, packed with sensor and data collection equipment, will enable Hyphen to “precisely model the energy yield of the wind and solar resources to enable the optimised design of the [renewable-energy part of the] project”, the company says.

An 11th met mast at the site, which was originally installed by national electricity utility NamPower for a potential wind farm, has also been acquired by Hyphen and refitted with new measurement equipment.

Together, the 11 met masts have cost Hyphen about €2m ($2.17m) to set up.

“Namibia has made great strides to become the frontrunner in green hydrogen and ammonia production,” said President Mbumba during his visit. “The inauguration of Hyphen’s met masts signifies the next and essential phase to develop this green hydrogen project for and in Namibia.”

Hyphen CEO Marco Raffinettti added: “We are appreciative of His Excellency’s support for this transformative project and for honouring us today by officially launching our resource measurement campaign.

“This is a very ambitious project as evidenced by the fact that we believe that this met-mast campaign is one of the largest single wind field measurement campaigns ever undertaken globally.”

Hyphen — a joint venture between German renewable developer Enertrag and UK-based Nicholas Holdings — has already signed offtake memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with Germany’s RWE (300,000 tonnes a year), South Korean industrial gases firm Approtium (250,000 tonnes), and an unnamed “major chemical company” (500,000 tonnes).

Nangolo Mbumba, 82, became president of Namibia in February, following the death of his predecessor Hage Geingob, who had been an enthusiastic supporter of Hyphen’s project.