Storing hydrogen deep underground in salt caverns and converting it into power could help meet the UK’s future peak energy and load, according to a new report published by the UK Energy Technologies Institute (ETI).
The Peak Energy Report examines the role hydrogen storage could play in a clean, responsive power system. It argues that using salt caverns to store hydrogen for power generation 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. The UK’s energy landscape is changing rapidly. More renewable power supplies are being installed and, although clean, these are intermittent, which increases the need for a low-cost, clean, on-demand power supply that currently only fossil fuel plants can provide,” Dennis Gammer, the report’s author, said.
Gammer said that one of the main benefits of this option is cost, as hydrogen storage can provide low-cost and clean power. “Large amounts of energy can be stored, with one cavern providing enough storage capacity to satisfy the peak demands of a single UK city,” he said. Salt caverns are already used to store oil and natural gas and there are around 30 large caverns in the UK.