Power-to-Gas – Chemical storage of excess power
| Partners | Institute of Energy Systems (Prof. Spliethoff), Chair of Technical Chemistry I (Prof. Hinrichsen), Institute of Plant and Process Technology (Prof. Klein), Chair of Technical Electrochemistry (Prof. Gasteiger), ZAE Bayern |
| Funding | Munich School of Engineering (MSE) |
| Duration | March 2014 to March 2015 |
| Contact | Dr. Tobias Hartmann, Dipl.-Ing. Johannes Winklmaier |
The increasing use of renewable energies in Germany leads to an increasing spatial and temporal decoupling of supply and demand in the electricity market. In times of significant excess supply, wind turbines are already throttled down these days for grid stabilization. Power-to-gas (PtG) is a technology that allows to store these unused amounts of electricity chemically and to transport them through the natural gas network to the existing demand centers. During the initial process step, the electrolysis, water is split into oxygen and hydrogen using electricity. In an optional second process step, the synthesis, hydrogen can be processed to methanol or methane. The synthetic methane can be fed into the natural gas grid, so Power-to-Gas is one of the few storage technologies that are also suitable for a seasonal power storage.
The involved project partners of the Technische Universität München and the ZAE Bayern analyze both the individual process steps at the technology level and the whole process chain at the system level. The intention is to continue this collaboration together with industry partners in a follow-up project.
The project tasks of the Chair of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Systems are the investigation of potential markets, operational concepts as well as the potential of use for this technology. This analysis is used to derive a roadmap for the market introduction.