Hydrogen stored in salt caverns could be converted into flexible power source

The proposal is put forward in the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) report Hydrogen – The role of hydrogen storage in a clean responsive power system by carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategy manager Den Gammer.

This uses findings from a techno-economic study carried out by Amec Foster Wheeler into the technologies used in hydrogen production, the stores themselves and the power sector that converts hydrogen into electricity.

It concluded that using salt caverns to store hydrogen for power generation when the demand for electricity peaks would reduce the investment needed in new clean power station capacity.

“We discovered that the ability to store hydrogen in large quantities and convert that hydrogen into power is a reliable, affordable and flexible way of creating power to meet peak energy demands in the UK,” Gammer said in a statement.

“The UK’s energy landscape is changing very rapidly. More renewable power supplies are being installed and, although clean, these new supplies are intermittent, which increases the need for a low-cost, clean, on-demand power supply that currently only fossil fuel plants can provide.