EWE takes on a pioneering role in hydrogen storage

Oldenburg--The energy service provider EWE creates facts when it comes to storing hydrogen: In Rüdersdorf near Berlin in Brandenburg, the company is building a cavern storage facility in the salt rock at a depth of around 1,000 meters in order to store 100 percent hydrogen there for the first time. Construction will start at the beginning of next year. EWE boss Stefan Dohler announced this today in Oldenburg at an online press conference - together with the "EWE hydrogen ambassador" and engineer Paul Schneider.

EWE is thus starting a research project on the safe storage of hydrogen, with which EWE is taking on "a pioneering role in Europe" according to Stefan Dohler. The construction of the 500 cubic meter test cavern is expected to take 18 months. “In the second half of 2022, we particularly hope to gain knowledge of the degree of purity of the hydrogen after it has been withdrawn from the cavern. This criterion is particularly important for the use of hydrogen in the mobility sector, ”says Dohler. EWE is cooperating with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) on the project. The DLR Institute for Networked Energy Systems in Oldenburg examines, among other things, the quality of the hydrogen during storage and after extraction from the cavern. The investment volume of the project called HyCAVmobil is around ten million euros - four million of which are EWE's own funds. EWE and DLR will receive the remaining sum as part of the National Innovation Program for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology as funding from the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. According to Dohler, building up a hydrogen economy is an absolutely necessary step towards a sustainable and climate-friendly energy syst em. "Hydrogen storage systems are of particular importance because they are essential in order to be able to provide hydrogen as an energy carrier as required," explained the EWE boss. Paul Schneider made it clear that the findings provided by the research cavern - at 500 cubic meters, it has about the volume of a single-family house - can easily be transferred to caverns with 1,000 times the volume. "The aim is to use caverns with a volume of 500,000 cubic meters - in which the Eiffel Tower would fit - for hydrogen storage", explained the EWE engineer.

EWE also has caverns in Rüdersdorf and has been storing natural gas there since 2007. Like all caverns that are created in underground salt rock, the test cavern cavity is created by rinsing the salt rock with fresh water. According to Paul Schneider, hydrogen is a gas that can be obtained from water using renewable energies. Unlike electricity generated from wind or sunlight, for example, this renewable, green gas can then be stored and transported again. “This means that renewable energies can in future be stored on a large scale in the form of hydrogen. Hydrogen is therefore a flexible energy carrier and can be used when it is needed. This means that green hydrogen generated from renewable energies is an indispensable component in order to achieve set climate targets and to link the three sectors of electricity, mobility and heat, ”says Schneider. According to Stefan Dohler, potential users of hydrogen are all companies who are asking themselves how they can make their business activities climate-neutral. “As an energy service provider, EWE sees itself as having a special responsibility. The energy sector must offer industry and other private and commercial consumers alternative and, if possible, CO 2 -free energy, ”emphasized Stefan Dohler. As an energy supplier, EWE is already active in areas such as energy generation, large-scale natural gas storage and transport infrastructure. EWE also has salt caverns in north-west Germany that could be suitable for storing hydrogen in the future. “EWE is therefore ideally suited as a system integrator along the hydrogen value chain. In the long term, for example, we can supply the freight forwarder in our own region as well as the steel producer with hydrogen and support them with know-how, ”said Paul Schneider.

With a view to the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050, Stefan Dohler stated: “Our planet and its inhabitants need leaps in innovation in new technologies. In this regard, EWE is committed to implementing projects quickly and pragmatically. As an ambitious hydrogen supplier that works beyond its own region, EWE is looking for suitable partners from industry and business in order to build up the hydrogen market on both the supply and the demand side. Numbers, data and facts on the research project in Rüdersdorf Timetable: • Construction of a 500 cubic meter cavern to store five to six tons of hydrogen • Start of construction: February 2021 • Test start: spring 2022 • First test results: autumn 2022 Environmentally relevant properties of hydrogen: • non-toxic, non-irritating • climate-neutral • not hazardous to water

EWE Building Test Caverns for Hydrogen Storage Starting from February 2021