Lajos Erdélyi will be one of the speakers at the Budapest Hydrogen Summit, to be held on 10 April 2024.
Earlier in January 2024, the EUH2STARS project, a European flagship project for the conversion of existing underground natural gas into hydrogen storage was launched. We spoke with Lajos Erdélyi, project manager of major hydrogen-based energy storage projects at the Hungarian Gas Storage (MFGT) about the importance of the project for Hungary and the region as a whole, the role of underground hydrogen storage in supporting the energy transition and the strategic goals of MFGT in terms of hydrogen on the Hungarian and regional market.
“EUH2STARS is of outstanding importance throughout Europe for companies, political decision-makers, authorities and the general public for the transformation of European energy systems and for enabling the energy transition,” Mr Erdélyi begins. “Basic technical and economic scenarios will be developed for a wide range of geological conditions and in very different energy environments. This will ensure that the results of the EUH2STARS project will benefit a wide range of stakeholders across Europe.”
As he explains, the EUH2STARS consortium led by RAG Austria, not only covers the entire hydrogen storage value chain – from the centrepiece of storage, hydrogen processing, transport networks and energy suppliers – but also integrates key research institutions. RAG Austria, together with its partners, will develop and plan the measures necessary for a safe, reliable and rapid ramp-up of the hydrogen economy along the entire value chain for the duration of the project until mid-2029.
Speaking of the role of MFGT, Mr Erdélyi underlines the importance of learning from this project, developing ideas, conducting engineering studies on actually injecting and withdrawing pure hydrogen and on how to change other reservoirs in high-purity reservoirs and take significant steps towards sector coupling.
“MFGT will set up a test environment for the first two and a half years, to upgrade the infrastructure, to start injecting hydrogen at the Kardoskut UGS and see how it will behave,” he underlines. “Also we will investigate several aspects of hydrogen storing like reservoir engineering, well and surface operation and will establish a basic engineering study to prepare this reservoir to start implementing the infrastructure after the completion of the project.”
Speaking about potential cooperation with Hungary’s electricity and gas transmission system operators (TSOs), Mr Erdélyi mentions the legislative obstacles and currently, there is no legal ground about blended gases in the transmission network.
“However, by when the EUH2STARS project will be completed in mid-2029, we should have some legal ground in which to operate as following the Fit for 55 legislative package a maximum of 2 per cent of blending should be allowed to be injected,” he adds. “Once we will be able to store pure hydrogen, then most probably also dedicated transmission lines will be needed.”
“Once we can upscale the project we can have up to some 10 million cubic metres of hydrogen stored,” Mr Erdélyi points out.
Indeed, as the slogan of the project says, Paving the way towards the future of European underground hydrogen storage, is an essential pillar of the energy transition.
According to Lajos Erdélyi, it demonstrates the following project objectives:
- getting EU funding for the development of safe and market-ready hydrogen storage in underground gas reservoirs and the construction of hydrogen storage infrastructure;
- having renewables which are more reliable and base-load capable – meaning that solar and/or wind energy can be utilised all year round in the form of hydrogen – without CO2 emissions;
- decoupling the generation of wind and solar energy from its immediate consumption makes it possible to time shift its use from moments of excess to moments of deficit;
- to produce, store, transport and use green hydrogen all year round.
“The project will demonstrate the economic and technical feasibility and qualify a complete storage system for large-scale underground hydrogen storage, its contribution to intermittent electricity management, security of supply, interface with hydrogen end-users as well as the economies of scale that can be realised,” he explains.
“Hydrogen is the key to increasing the security of energy supply in the context of the energy transition.”
He tells us that the EU grant behind the project covers 70 per cent of the costs, which signals to what extent the EU is focusing on the energy transition and what hydrogen storage can offer to reach it.
“Indirectly we also focus on renewables but more from a balancing service point of view,” says Mr Erdélyi. “Renewables are the future but if we think about a world that is 100 per cent powered by renewables, we cannot imagine it without different types of energy storage and one of the best options is to store pure hydrogen in high volumes.”
Regarding the timeline of the EUH2STARS project, the following further aspects are being investigated:
- the optimal management of all environmental, legal and (future) regulatory, societal and market aspects to ensure a successful implementation of underground hydrogen storage in Europe;
- hydrogen purification with high purity;
- certification for green hydrogen;
- best practice examples for the integration of hydrogen storage into local, national and European energy infrastructure and the energy market;
- establishment of an interactive process to involve interest groups to increase the acceptance of such infrastructure projects.
“The project started on 1 January 2024 and the last deliverable will be completed in 69 months ending the project by 30 September 2029,” recalls Mr Erdélyi. “According to the approach, first the demonstrator site Sun Storage RAG will be thoroughly monitored in terms of several aspects of operation and also business viability and then in the second phase of the project the lessons learned will be incorporated into several upscaling alternatives all over Europe (Austria, Hungary, Spain and the Netherlands).”
According to him, the legislation will be a major risk during the implementation of the project, so the best approach would be to have a test environment and then develop the legislation around it. The other risks mentioned, like the financial one, the timeline and the know-how, will be managed easily.
“MFGT is focusing more on the long-term utilisation of the existing infrastructure, involving additional storage services in its service portfolio,” Mr Erdélyi concludes. “Offering balancing services to the high voltage electricity grid, producing and storing in high volume and purity gaseous media like hydrogen in the meantime will lead MFGT to energy storage services by the early ‘30s in line with the energy restructuring objective of EU.”