Hydrogen-the flexible storage for electrical energy

The quality of life in society is directly linked to the access to energy. To achieve a high standard of living, the energy supply must be safe, reliable and affordable for everybody. Moreover, the energy supplied to customers should be usable for various applications. This suggests electrical energy which can be easily transformed to all the needs of the customer: power; heat; light; and communication. Therefore the trend to increase the utilisation of electricity in customer applications will continue in the future. Electrical energy, however suffers from some disadvantages: transportation is only possible over limited distances and needs a network; also direct storage systems for large capacity systems are mainly in the prototype and demonstration phases of development. The introduction of hydrogen will help to overcome these difficulties as it can be easily produced by electrical energy via electrolysis and reconverted to electricity by power plants. This article describes various activities being carried out by certain German utilities in conjunction with other European and Canadian utilities in preparing the way for the introduction of integrated hydrogen energy carrier systems within traditional fuel based energy infrastructures.