ITM Power has been given government funding to commence feasibility studies for a 100MW power-to-gas storage project at Runcorn.
Project Centurion aims to demonstrate an energy storage system that helps deliver decarbonisation across heat, transport and industry. It explores hydrogen production via electrolysis, transportation and salt cavern storage as well as gas grid injection at industrial scale. The aim is to prove hydrogen can deliver other cross-vector benefits, including security of supply and enabling increased amounts of renewable energy on the UK system.
The Innovate UK funded feasibility study will explore the system design and costs and will assess the business case for deployment.
Project partners include Inovyn, Storengy, Cadent and Element Energy. They hope to determine the feasibility of siting a 100MW Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolyser at Inovyn’s Runcorn Site, which already produces hydrogen for onsite use as a co-product of the chlor-alkali process.
The site has an existing 420MW supergrid connection, power electronics and planning consent for industrial scale hydrogen production. The transport of hydrogen by pipeline to salt caverns near Lostock, where it can be stored pure or blended with natural gas, will be explored, along with the feasibility of injection into the local gas network.
Other potential demands for the hydrogen will be assessed, including industrial and transport use which will support existing studies in the area, such as Cadent’s HyNet project.
Related stories:
ITM Power opens seventh UK hydrogen vehicle refuelling station
Vattenfall backs hydrogen to decarbonise industry, eyes supply chain
Hydrogen: the great white hope for decarbonisation?
Cadent plans major hydrogen plus carbon capture and storage push
Hydrogen for heat ‘will create anchor carbon capture and storage projects’
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Please! What is the budget for the 100 MWe PEM electrolysis plant and its ancillary plant? What is the expected efficiency, from electricity to hydrogen, both LCV and HHV. It’s not clear from the article that it will be a privately funded of subsidized. Which will it be?