EWE launches first investigation into hydrogen storage requirements

Oldenburg, 13 September 2023. Storage is crucial in order to make sure large stocks of hydrogen are on hand to respond safely and flexibly to the needs of all kinds of applications. EWE subsidiary EWE GASSPEICHER is aiming to investigate the anticipated future scope of these storage requirements by becoming the first company in Germany to carry out a market survey on this topic. This survey is aimed at all enterprises that have identified a need for storage in the hydrogen market in the future. Storage capacity may be required for supplying hydrogen to industrial customers or hydrogen power plants, for example, or for domestic hydrogen production and imports. The official survey is due to be launched at midnight on 18 September 2023 and will run until 11:59 p.m. on 20 October 2023. Interested enterprises are welcome to register now at https://www.ewe-gasspeicher.de/en/market-survey-for-hydrogen-storage/.

“This survey will help us gauge future demand for hydrogen storage in order to be able to develop storage capacities in line with customer requirements for flexibility and security of supply. Based on this, EWE GASSPEICHER is planning to create sufficient storage capacities for hydrogen in underground storage caverns,” says Peter Schmidt, Managing Director of EWE GASSPEICHER.

“EWE has several decades of experience in gas storage to draw on when it comes to developing this key infrastructure for scaling up hydrogen. With this experience and the geological conditions available in northwest Germany, EWE is ideally placed to build up this storage infrastructure and thus get actively involved in scaling up hydrogen in Germany and in Europe as a whole,” says EWE’s Chief Technical Officer, Dr Urban Keussen.

EWE is pursuing a range of hydrogen-related projects throughout the value chain under the umbrella of the “Clean Hydrogen Coastline” IPCEI project. This includes schemes for generating, transporting and using – particularly in the industrial and transport sector – as well as storing hydrogen. Unlike electricity, hydrogen can be stored on a large scale, primarily in underground salt caverns.

To develop this high-volume storage capacity, evidence is needed to show that hydrogen can be stored safely. With this in mind, EWE has built an initial underground hydrogen storage facility in Ruedersdorf, Brandenburg, and has already demonstrated that the pipeline to the cavern is secure down to a depth of 1,000 metres. The hydrogen storage facility is due to undergo extensive testing during the autumn – a key step in enabling this system to be applied to large-scale caverns too. In general, EWE’s flagship project is intended to provide the basis for making it possible to store and use hydrogen generated from renewable energies in large quantities and according to demand.

“With this new market survey on storage requirements, EWE is once again taking on a pioneering role in scaling up hydrogen and thus driving forward the energy revolution. Germany has set itself the target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045. Developing a hydrogen infrastructure will play an instrumental role in this,” says Keussen. As a company, EWE is aiming to become carbon-neutral as early as 2035.