Schneider Electric, the global leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation and Storengy, a subsidiary of ENGIE, one of the world leaders in underground natural gas storage and key player in the development of renewable gases, are working together to achieve the zero-carbon transition and announce a partnership to offer underground hydrogen storage solutions.
A partnership to accelerate decarbonization
“By signing this partnership, Storengy and Schneider Electric pool their fields of expertise to help businesses decarbonize faster. “Schneider Electric is supporting the transition towards a more digital and electric world to take up the challenges brought about by the climate crisis. Our partnership with Storengy fits into this strategy to accelerate the accomplishment of our direct and indirect clients’ carbon neutrality objectives”, said Marc Fromager, Director of Industrial Automation & End Users at Schneider Electric France.”
This partnership is initiated through a first project named HyPSTER* at the Etrez storage site (in the department of Ain). The solution will be powered by local renewable energy (photovoltaic, hydraulic) to produce renewable hydrogen. This project aims to install a demonstrator for underground hydrogen storage in a salt cavern. It will also be a mean to validate the technical and economic reproducibility of the process at other sites in Europe.
A Partnership between two leaders of the French energy sector
To support this zero-carbon storage, Schneider Electric will provide its expertise in the fields of automation solutions, process instrumentation, gas analysis and energy distribution to Storengy.
Together, both companies will design a Power Systems and Process Automation solution dedicated to underground hydrogen storage. The solutions implemented require manufacturing skills, for both energy management and process steering. Thus, Schneider Electric shall design packages which will be reproducible to other facilities.
“Storengy salutes this agreement with Schneider Electric, which is a great opportunity to pursue common research and development projects in order to offer concrete, innovative and replicable solutions to our clients. In a carbon-neutral world, underground hydrogen storage will play an essential role to provide resiliency and flexibility to the energy system”, specifies Camille Bonenfant-Jeanneney, Storengy C.E.O.
* Hydrogen Pilot Storage for large Ecosystem Replication
About the HyPSTER project
HyPSTER is the first large-scale green hydrogen storage project in salt caverns supported by the European Union. This project with a total budget 13 million euros has been granted a 5-million euro subvention by the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH 2 JU). In addition to Storengy, 6 other European partners are involved: ARMINES/Polytechniques, Inovyn, Element Energy, ESK, Ineris and chemical-environmental competitive cluster AXELERA.
For further information about the project and its partners, please visit the website: https://hypster-project.eu/
This project has received funding from the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 101006751. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Hydrogen Europe and Hydrogen Europe Research.
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