The Siemens solution for lots of storage seems to be fairly well thought out, and serious engineering muscle is being applied.

During times of over production of electricity, the proposal is that power is diverted to Silyzer Electrolysis  units which are based on a proton exchange membrane cell (electrolysis like at school, but with much of the excess ohmic voltage drop in the liquid path eliminated, as the membrane allows the electrodes to be much closer without the hydrogen and oxygen mixing), already scaling to hundreds of megawatts.

The gas can then be stored in much the same way as we currently store methane, or used to store the 40/60 hydrogen carbon monoxide mix we used to call town gas, and the volume required for enough to run a CCGT power station for a given time is about 130% of the volume needed to run one on methane, which we already know how to do. (remember gasometers ? Every town used to have a few it seemed.) more realistically in terms of volume, spherical high pressure storage tanks near the CCGT station would make more sense.

The turbines need to be re-optimised for hydrogen, as the flame speed is higher than methane (2.7m/s vs about 0.3m/s) and the use of air pre-mix needs to be significantly reduced.

However in 2017 or so the project began, and recently  Siemens announced they will have 100% hydrogen turbines accrss the full range of powers by 2030. The intention is to make replacement burners allowing existing models to be modified.


Hydrogen is not without issues of course - it has a tenancy to permeate steel and make the surface layers  brittle, and to slowly dissolve the insides of steel pipes, so  will need changes in the longer term.


As an aside, one of the problems of substituting H2 for CH4 for the domestic gas network is also the burner re-design, this starts to bite once you get much above the current proposals to introduce something like 20% H2 by volume   ( Small scale trials at Keele University and later to be rolled out to 600 households)  - at a higher concentration things would have to go back to be much be more similar  to how they were with town gas, with slot burners and less pre-mix, so something closer to diffusion flames. Additionally various safety related things like flame detection by ion current are much less easy to make reliable than they are with carbon atoms in the mixture.  However these are all soluble problems, if we need to do so.

No doubt among others, Worcester Bosh Boilers are on the case to design a H2 capable domestic boiler.

The Siemens solution for lots of storage seems to be fairly well thought out, and serious engineering muscle is being applied.

During times of over production of electricity, the proposal is that power is diverted to Silyzer Electrolysis  units which are based on a proton exchange membrane cell (electrolysis like at school, but with much of the excess ohmic voltage drop in the liquid path eliminated, as the membrane allows the electrodes to be much closer without the hydrogen and oxygen mixing), already scaling to hundreds of megawatts.

The gas can then be stored in much the same way as we currently store methane, or used to store the 40/60 hydrogen carbon monoxide mix we used to call town gas, and the volume required for enough to run a CCGT power station for a given time is about 130% of the volume needed to run one on methane, which we already know how to do. (remember gasometers ? Every town used to have a few it seemed.) more realistically in terms of volume, spherical high pressure storage tanks near the CCGT station would make more sense.

The turbines need to be re-optimised for hydrogen, as the flame speed is higher than methane (2.7m/s vs about 0.3m/s) and the use of air pre-mix needs to be significantly reduced.

However in 2017 or so the project began, and recently  Siemens announced they will have 100% hydrogen turbines accrss the full range of powers by 2030. The intention is to make replacement burners allowing existing models to be modified.


Hydrogen is not without issues of course - it has a tenancy to permeate steel and make the surface layers  brittle, and to slowly dissolve the insides of steel pipes, so  will need changes in the longer term.


As an aside, one of the problems of substituting H2 for CH4 for the domestic gas network is also the burner re-design, this starts to bite once you get much above the current proposals to introduce something like 20% H2 by volume   ( Small scale trials at Keele University and later to be rolled out to 600 households)  - at a higher concentration things would have to go back to be much be more similar  to how they were with town gas, with slot burners and less pre-mix, so something closer to diffusion flames. Additionally various safety related things like flame detection by ion current are much less easy to make reliable than they are with carbon atoms in the mixture.  However these are all soluble problems, if we need to do so.

No doubt among others, Worcester Bosh Boilers are on the case to design a H2 capable domestic boiler.