The Anonymous Widower

Large Scale Hydrogen Storage Sites Could Reduce Customer Energy Costs By £1bn Per Year

The title of this post, is the same as this press release from Centrica.

These four paragraphs summarise the report.

Centrica and FTI report finds that hydrogen storage would help balance the UK’s energy system and reduce bills.

A net zero scenario including large scale hydrogen storage – specifically, a redeveloped Rough gas storage facility – would reduce energy costs by an additional £1bn per year by 2050.

Report also finds that a UK energy system focused on renewable generation risks high levels of intermittency without an established hydrogen market. By 2050, electricity generation from renewables could exceed total demand around 15% of the time.

Electricity generation from renewables could also rise or fall by as much as 100GW over the course of a single day. More than twice current levels of peak demand on winter evenings and the equivalent energy output from over 30 Hinkley Point C nuclear power stations.

Note.

1. Hydrogen Central entitles their article about the Centrica press release Centrica Says Hydrogen Can Reduce Household Bills by £35 a Year. That’s almost a bottle of my favourite Adnams beer a week!
2. I talked about the redevelopment of the Rough facility into hydrogen storage in Aberdeen’s Exceed Secures Centrica Rough Contract.
3. Generating hydrogen from excess electricity and storing it until it is needed, must be an efficient way of storing electricity or powering industrial processes that need a lot of energy, if storing hydrogen makes £1bn per year!
4. It should be noted that Centrica have a large interest in HiiROC, who are developing an efficient way to generate hydrogen from any hydrocarbon gas from chemical plant off-gas through biomethane to natural gas. In a perfect world a HiiROC system in a sewage works could capture the biomethane and split it into hydrogen and carbon black. The hydrogen could be used to refuel vehicles and the carbon black would be taken away to someone, who has need of it.

In some ways, it is surely sensible to have enough energy in a store, if the renewables fail. As Rough is already there and functioning, it is surely one of the easiest routes to redevelop Rough, so that it is in top-quality condition.

It should also be noted, that Rough is not far from the Aldbrough Gas Storage, which SSE are converting to a second massive hydrogen store.

So Humberside will have two of the largest hydrogen stores in the world, which Centrica and SSE will use to maxise energy security in the wider Humberside and East Yorkshire area, and I suspect to maximise their profits as well.

This video shows the structure of AquaVentus, which is a pipeline system, that the Germans are building to bring much-needed hydrogen to German industry from electrolysers in the North Sea and other countries like Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK.

I clipped this map from the video.

Note how a branch of AquaVentus makes landfall around the Humber estuary at a UK label.

Will Centrica and SSE be trading hydrogen from Rough and Aldbrough with the Germans through AquaVentus? You bet they will, as the Germans are short of both hydrogen and hydrogen storage.

November 23, 2024 - Posted by AnonW | Energy, Energy Storage, Hydrogen | Aldbrough Gas Storage, Centrica, Germany, HiiROC, Hinckley Point C Nuclear Power Station, Humberside, Rough Gas Storage, SSE