The day begins with breakfast from eight to nine o'clock for the employees of Skovgaard Energy at the Port in Lemvig. The breakfast buffet for the 25 employees offers, among other things, two types of homemade buns from the early morning, because if you do something at Skovgaard Energy, you do it right.
This also applies to the staff's breakfast, which CEO Niels Erik Madsen also takes time for together with some of the employees before we find a meeting room to talk about the PtX plant that is almost finished south of the city.
- It started in the fall of 2021 with the investment decision on Reddap PtX. We already had wind and established the solar park, explains Niels Erik Madsen about the 50 MW solar park over 85 hectares near the rural village of Ramme, about 15 km south of Lemvig.
Here, both the solar cells and the wind turbines were already in place, as well as another very important thing that could secure the electricity without expensive grid tariffs to the public grid.
- We had a site where we could get the direct line to the plant with the green electricity, says the CEO.
A well-known product
Skovgaard Energy's founder and owner, Jørgen Skovgaard, already had a good collaboration with Vestas, which is one of the partners in the PtX project together with Topsoe. The decision to produce ammonia at the plant was not accidental.
- Ammonia was a product that Jørgen already knew. He was not afraid to dive into it, says Niels Erik Madsen and elaborates:
- Ammonia will be used for both shipping and fertilizer in the future. The special thing here is that production can be run up and down in ten minutes. The production is dynamic.
This helps to ensure that production can be stopped when there is no green power from the solar cells and wind turbines on days when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing. The climate perspective is also understandable to that extent.
- Black ammonia currently emits between one and two percent of the world's CO2 emissions, says Niels Erik Madsen and outlines another possibility:
- We are coming up with a solution to store energy in green ammonia on days when there is overproduction of renewable energy. It is a known technique that helps to show how green power can be stored in ammonia.
The learning starts in Ramme
Where other energy companies are making very large profits with one GW-PtX projects, the approach is different at Skovgaard Energy.
- This is our playpen with a ten MW plant, where we get a lot of learning in dynamic production of ammonia from green electricity. We practice crawling before we can walk, explains Niels Erik Madsen about the sensible strategy, which already has a planned big brother:
- After that, we will proceed with an investment decision on 150 MW hydrogen production in Idomlund near Holstebro in 2026 or 2027.
But for that to happen, the prerequisite is that it is beneficial to the local area.
- It must be smart energy that can provide local jobs here in Klimapark Nordvestjylland, which is a collaboration between the municipalities of Lemvig, Struer and Holstebro, says Niels Erik Madsen.
The idea is also that the energy should be used locally rather than sending it, for example, to industry in Germany in the form of hydrogen.
- Why shouldn't there be an industry here that can take the hydrogen that we will produce? asks Niels Erik Madsen, who also believes that both the basis is there and it would be an advantage to have a hydrogen pipeline to take the production of hydrogen to Idomlund.
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