Stephan Bauer will be one of the speakers at the Budapest Hydrogen Summit, to be held on 10 April 2024.
The significant expansion of renewable energy generation required to achieve the climate targets is a major challenge for the security of supply and the existing energy infrastructure. This must be able to cope with the increase in volatile electricity production from renewables.
The core questions for the energy future are: how can we carry renewable solar and wind energy over into the winter? How can we use these energy forms whenever we need them, regardless of the weather and the season? How can we make green gases and, above all, hydrogen widely available? And how can we make use of methane without generating emissions?
RAG Austria answers these questions with its overarching sustainable energy concept consisting of sustainable energy solutions in combination with ‘renewables and gas’, security of supply thanks to high-capacity energy storage facilities and ‘sustainable energy mining’.
This means combining conventional gas storage with renewables unlocks the challenges of renewable energy storage and creates a needs-based structure on an industrial scale.
Sustainable energy solutions
For many years now, RAG has been working constantly to develop new technologies that will make it possible to store and utilise large volumes of renewable energy efficiently.
As energy generation from erratic renewables such as solar, wind and hydro increases, so does the need for storage facilities that can be used to balance out the seasonal swings from energy surplus (excess solar energy in summer) to deficit (increased demand due to low temperatures and weak sunlight in winter). This is the only way of uncoupling renewable generation and its short-term consumption, which in turn makes it possible to safeguard the security of supply all year round and create a needs-based structure on an industrial scale, while at the same time protecting the climate and the environment for future generations. To do this, RAG’s aim is to make use of existing gas infrastructure, comprising storage, pipelines and wells – this will form the basis of a climate-friendly and affordable renewable energy system in the future.
Underground Sun Storage 2030
In this ‘Underground Sun Storage 2030’ demonstration facility, the world‘s first pure hydrogen storage facility, which was recently constructed in Gampern, Upper Austria, solar energy is converted into green hydrogen by water electrolysis and stored in pure form in an underground natural gas reservoir. The scale of the storage corresponds to the summer surplus of about 1,000 photovoltaic systems in family homes. In summer, this surplus energy is stored and in winter the green energy can be provided again in the form of electricity and heat. RAG will bring 4.2 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) (or 4.2 gigawatt-hours, GWh) of summer electricity in the form of hydrogen into the winter and thus secure the supply of renewable energies.
EUH2STARS
The scale-up project EUH2STARS, is an ambitious, industry-driven flagship project supported by the Clean Hydrogen Partnership (via the 2023 call HORIZON-JTI-CLEANH2-2023-02-1 – Large-Scale Demonstration of Underground Hydrogen Storage programme).
Based on the broad range of the consortium’s experiences in underground hydrogen storage, EUH2STARS aims to deliver many key results for the energy future. It will show transformation pathways to replicate demonstrator findings in full-scale commercial settings at existing underground natural gas storage facilities and new to-be-developed underground hydrogen storage sites in depleted natural gas reservoirs in Europe by providing subsurface design and surface facilities engineering.
Based on the broad range of the consortium’s experiences in underground hydrogen storage, EUH2STARS aims to deliver key results to manage successfully all environmental, safety, legal and (future) regulatory, societal and market-related aspects to ensure a successful implementation of a UHS facility in Europe.
The partners will demonstrate the storage of 100 per cent hydrogen in underground porous gas reservoirs by operating four seasonal storage cycles at RAG’s demonstrator and two storage cycles at HGS’s replicator site.
It will be vital to develop a beyond-state-of-the-art hydrogen purification system and integrate it into the demonstrator’s withdrawal process and demonstrate the successful separation of impurities (mainly natural gas) in the reservoir from hydrogen during withdrawal cycles to achieve standardised hydrogen purification levels (for example, hydrogen grade A or better). It is also very important to achieve a relevant green hydrogen certification for the demonstrator’s power to hydrogen electrolysis and engage actively in green hydrogen certificate trading.
Finally, the project will show transformation pathways to replicate demonstrator findings in full-scale commercial settings at existing underground natural gas storage facilities and new to-be-developed underground hydrogen storage sites in Europe by providing subsurface design and surface facilities engineering. The replicator underground hydrogen storage sites are located in Austria (RAG), The Netherlands (SHELL), Hungary (HGS) and Spain (TES) and include a comprehensive CAPEX assessment with potential investment decisions throughout the project duration.
Outlook
RAG Austria believes that the future energy landscape must offer security of supply and be climate-friendly, technologically open and interlinked. The project partners have to work together and play an active part, bringing the know-how, practical experience and innovative capabilities to bear on the rapid realisation of a sustainable energy system.