E.ON starts construction of power-to-gas pilot plant in Germany

Construction of E.ON’s new pilot plant to enable power generated by the wind to be stored in the gas grid is now underway. The plant will be built in Falkenhagen, located in north-east Germany. From 2013 onwards the power-to-gas plant will handle excess power that is generated by wind farms and cannot be fed into the power grid. By storing the excess power, wind farms, which would otherwise be shutdown for a while to avoid bottlenecks in the power grid, can continue to generate power.



The plant works by using electrolysis. In the process about 360 m³ of hydrogen is produced per hour. This hydrogen can then be treated like natural gas. Once the process is complete, it can then be fed into the regional gas grid where it is then available for producing heat and power.

Power-to-gas technology is particularly attractive because of the large storage capacity offered by existing gas infrastructure. Due to gas regulations, at the moment only a small amount of hydrogen gas can be fed into the gas infrastructure. To expand the energy storage potential, the next step is to convert hydrogen into synthetic gas. Theoretically, this means that the entire storage capacity of the gas grid could be used.