Siemens tauts Walvis Bay hydrogen pioneer

Siemens has released an 11-minute documentary on YouTube, taking viewers inside a leading off-grid green hydrogen plant in Africa: Walvis Bay’s CMB.Tech industrial hub at Farm 58. The video was released on 7 August and has been viewed more than 2.7 million times.

According to local media reports, Siemens’ Chief Executive Officer for sub-Saharan Africa, Sabine Dall’Omo, said last week that “Africa’s first fully integrated green hydrogen facility demonstrates that large-scale clean energy production is not a future ambition, but a present-day reality”. On 23 July, Siemens confirmed to its 92 million followers on LinkedIn that “just outside Walvis Bay, Africa’s first solar-powered multi-modal green hydrogen facility is producing hydrogen today”.

CMB.Tech is a major global maritime and clean technology group headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium, operating a fleet of about 250 seagoing vessels. Local press quoted Roy Campe, Chief Technology Officer at CMB.Tech, as saying that the company intends to significantly expand the facility.

It currently uses a 5 MW solar plant with a 5 MW battery storage system to power an electrolyser that produces green hydrogen. The hydrogen production, together with plans to produce ammonia near Arandis, forms part of the company’s strategy to create a refuelling option for the CMB.Tech fleet, which is continually being retrofitted with integrated dual-fuel technologies.

Siemens supplied key technologies, including a digital twin and automation infrastructure, enabling almost 80% of the plant’s processes to run automatically.

The global technology and engineering company is committed to CMB.Tech’s plans to scale production to 500 MW.