Power-to-Gas – Chemical storage of excess power

The increasing use of renewable energies in Germany leads to an increasing spatial and temporal decoupling of supply and demand in the electricity market. In times of significant excess supply, wind turbines are already throttled down these days for grid stabilization. Power-to-gas (PtG) is a technology that allows to store these unused amounts of electricity chemically and to transport them through the natural gas network to the existing demand centers. During the initial process step, the electrolysis, water is split into oxygen and hydrogen using electricity. In an optional second process step, the synthesis, hydrogen can be processed to methanol or methane. The synthetic methane can be fed into the natural gas grid, so Power-to-Gas is one of the few storage technologies that are also suitable for a seasonal power storage.