What Does The Future Hold For The Hydrogen Energy Storage?

Many big companies like Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Uniper SE are looking into the possibility to use hydrogen for energy storage and actively invest into research. Whereas investment in hydrogen has been comparatively small at $2.5 billion for the previous decade, that is expected to change in the next decade. At present, the majority of investment in energy storage goes to lithium-ion batteries. Although the principle of using hydrogen as energy storage is known, thus far it hasn’t been used commercially.

Unlike lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen can be kept indefinitely in tanks, letting stored energy to be used even after months. This makes hydrogen storage very appealing. Although pumped hydro can also store energy for longer periods, it is dependent on the proper location. Energy storage lets utilities handle better the excess power generated from wind and solar, thus increasing the role renewables could play in the energy system. Still, hydrogen is not without drawbacks either. According to Claire Curry, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ”government incentives are required to create a market for storage capacity”.

One interesting hydrogen project is the 10 megawatts plant in Fukushima, Japan. It is expected to begin operations in 2021. This project is a collaboration between Toshiba Corp. and the utility Tohoku Electric Power Co. and it could be the biggest one in the world when it is completed /from today’s perspective.

According to Andreas Froemmel, VP of Business and Commercial Development at FCES: “The technology is mature and ready to scale up. To get to the next level we need to continue to show its potential via large scale inter-sectoral demonstrations…”

Read the original article  

If you want to know more about this and other topics directly from end users of energy storage technologies join us at one of these annual events: The Energy Storage World Forum (Grid Scale Applications), or The Residential Energy Storage Forum, or one of our Training Courses.

LATEST ARTICLES

Product Development: Embracing product safety and compliance

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: EMBRACING PRODUCT SAFETY AND COMPLIANCE Recent safety incidents on storage plants have raised concerns about the fire safety of battery storage systems. Such events are extremely rare compared to the cumulated global deployments of energy storage systems, which have reached more than 27 GWh by end of 2020 (Wood Mackenzie 2021). However, for…

Read More

Future energy predictions: Growth of flexibility and grid forming

  It is well known that COVID-19 has caused low energy demand and the growth of renewable energy across Europe. Now, Andrew Tang, Vice President for Energy Storage at Wärtsilä, predicts this will result in swift action to build better grid resiliency. The share of renewable power across Europe has skyrocketed over the last six…

Read More

The UK National Energy Grid – A Story of Islands, Trading, and Energy Storage

As first seen in Energy Global, grid software acts as a modern-day map, helping to chart and navigate today’s energy grids; software engineers are tasked with carefully delineating how each region’s energy markets operate. However, looking more closely at energy markets makes clear how unique each market is – each defined by different topography, resources,…

Read More

★REVIEWS

“Probably the most interactive and well organized storage event on the calendar.”

★★★★★

Sales Director, S&C

“Great topics, competent speakers, good networking: keep it like that.”

★★★★★

TLC & SCADA Manager, FRI-EL

“High scientific content, well targeted, perfect organization.”

★★★★★

Expert Technical & Governance, Elia

Excellent networking event. The sponsorship was well worth it.”

★★★★★

Manager, ATL

View More

x