Austria-Germany Research Collaboration Developing Process to Store Renewable Electricity as Synthetic Natural Gas

Researchers in Austria and Germany are developing a process to store renewable electricity as synthetic natural through a combination of electrolysis to produce hydrogen combined with methanation using CO₂.

The process was developed by the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES. Solar Fuel Technology, the Austria-based partner company, is setting up the industrial implementation of the process. A demonstration system built on behalf of Solar Fuel in Stuttgart is already operating successfully.

The partners plan to launch a substantially larger system—approximately 10 MW—by 2012.

Our demonstration system in Stuttgart splits water using surplus renewable energy using electrolysis. The result is hydrogen and oxygen. A chemical reaction of hydrogen with carbon dioxide generates methane—and that is nothing other than natural gas, produced synthetically.

Within the development of this technology, ZSW has been guided by two core issues. Which storage systems offer sufficient capacity for compensating fluctuating renewable energies that depend on the wind and weather? And which storage systems can be integrated into the existing infrastructure the easiest?

—Dr. Michael Specht of ZSW

The efficiency of converting power to gas equals more than 60%, the researchers said.