Holland’s largest gas producer has launched a competition to try and crack long-term energy storage.
The €50,000 cash prize is small. But the winners get to scale up their technologies within NAM’s operations and infrastructure and will receive a contract to do so.
NAM is a joint venture between Shell and Exxon Mobil. It operates the giant Groningen gas field, which faces an uncertain political future due to earthquakes in the region caused by extraction.
The competition seeks technologies that are “compatible with the current energy system, which is based on gas as an energy carrier”, with the aim of storing “large, even massive amounts of renewable energy” so that it is always available when required.
Entrants should have tested their solutions in the lab or at a small scale.
See details here.
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Power-to-gas, making hydrogen gas by electrolysis of water using surplus renewable energy from wind and solar.
Wikipedia – Power to gas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas
Hydrogen can be stored undergound
Wikipedia – Underground hydrogen storage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_hydrogen_storage
or hydrogen can be stored under water
Off-Shore Electricity from Wind, Solar and Hydrogen Power
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/off-shore-electricity-from-wind-solar-and-hydrogen-power/
Deep Sea Hydrogen Storage
The diagram shows how hydrogen gas can be used to store energy from renewable-energy platforms floating at sea by sending any surplus wind and solar electrical power down a sub-sea cable to power underwater high-pressure electrolysis to make compressed hydrogen to store in underwater inflatable gas-bags.
It’s potentially very cheap because no super-strong pressure containment vessels are required – the ambient hydrostatic pressure which is proportional to depth serves to compress the hydrogen gas to containable densities.
Or if all that’s too much bother then simply grow trees to store solar energy and when needed burn the trees in biomass power stations.
Biomass – as a renewable energy source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass
Scottish Scientist
Independent Scientific Adviser for Scotland
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/
* Wind, storage and back-up system designer
* Double Tidal Lagoon Baseload Scheme
* Off-Shore Electricity from Wind, Solar and Hydrogen Power
* World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland?
* Modelling of wind and pumped-storage power
* Scotland Electricity Generation – my plan for 2020
* South America – GREAT for Renewable Energy