Pure hydrogen is stored for the first time in a natural underground gas reservoir. In summer, green hydrogen is generated from water and excess solar power, compressed at 90 bar and stored underground in Gampern in Upper Austria. In winter, the hydrogen is then available as an environmentally friendly source of energy. The Austrian RAG officially put this demonstration project, called Underground Sun Storage, into operation on Thursday.
“A rapid hydrogen ramp-up is essential. It is not enough to push the expansion of renewable energies”, said RAG boss Markus Mitteregger, “The solar and wind power of the summer months must be made storable and thus brought into the winter.” RAG once stood for Rohöl-Aufsuchungs Aktiengesellschaft and has since been reinterpreted as Renewables and Gas. The majority owner is EVN AG (Energieversorgung Niederösterreich, which in turn is majority owned by the state of Lower Austria).
Management to the power plant will follow later this year
The Gampern storage facility can store as much hydrogen as can be generated with electrolysis using 4.2 gigawatt hours of electricity. This corresponds to the summer surplus of around 1,000 photovoltaic systems on single-family homes. That’s not much, as RAG says there is a need for ten terawatt hours of seasonal energy transfer in Austria. But Gampern is just a demonstration facility, the next step after years of research in nearby Pilsbach. Now it’s no longer about technical feasibility, but about demonstrating suitability for everyday use and obtaining data as a basis for financial models.
In the summer, RAG is building an eight-kilometer hydrogen pipeline to a power plant. There, a gas turbine will convert the hydrogen into electricity and heat in winter. However, RAG itself will not enter the electricity business. The main focus of the company is the storage, conversion and conditioning of energy in the form of gaseous energy carriers. With storage capacities of around 6.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas, the company operates around six percent of the EU’s gas storage capacity. If it pays off, RAG would like to use its storage facilities for hydrogen.
From the sun into the underground storage tank in summer, out again in winter
(Image: RAG)
RAG has numerous project partners in Gampern. In addition to the majority owner EVN, the Axiom Angewandte Prozesstechnik, Energie AG Oberösterreich, the Energy Institute of the Johannes Kepler University Linz, HyCentA Research, K1-MET, the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Verbund, voestalpine Stahl and the association Hydrogen Initiative Flagship Region Austria Power & Gas (WIVA P&G).
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