SaltHy: Hydrogen storage in Harsefeld

Underground salt cavern storage facilities are a proven technology for safely storing large quantities of gas. As part of the SaltHy project, Storengy Deutschland wants to transfer the storage technology to hydrogen. The existing Harsefeld natural gas storage facility is to be expanded to include additional caverns and associated above-ground facilities for the underground storage of hydrogen. Hydrogen storage can be used to temporarily store renewable energy from volatile energy sources. This allows energy generation to be decoupled from energy consumption in terms of space and time, which makes an important contribution to energy supply security as part of the energy transition.

The location of Harsefeld in Lower Saxony in northern Germany with its adjacent port and a high supply of renewable energies make the region around Stade an important strategic hub for trade, logistics and industrial developments in the field of hydrogen. In the future, large quantities of hydrogen and its derivatives such as ammonia are to be landed in the region via the planned LNG and ammonia terminals.

In addition, the planned hydrogen storage facility in Harsefeld will be directly connected to the European hydrogen transport core network via the "Hyperlink" project and the distribution network of the "Hamburg Green Hydrogen Hub", meaning that the storage facility can play an important role in the northern German hydrogen infrastructure.

Available space for onshore and offshore wind turbines in the region means that green hydrogen can also be produced locally, enabling the connection between local production, import infrastructure and consumption centers (local, energy-intensive industry) in Stade.

For these reasons, Storengy wants to push ahead with hydrogen storage in Harsefeld as part of the SaltHy project. To this end, the existing natural gas storage facility is to be expanded to include two new salt caverns for the storage of 100 percent hydrogen. Commissioning of the first new salt cavern is planned for 2030/32. A decision on the construction of the second cavern is to be made in 2028, depending on the development of the H2 market, with the aim of starting operations from 2034. A storage volume of around 7,500 tons of hydrogen per cavern is planned - enough to cover the needs of a regional steelworks of 140 tons of hydrogen per day for around two months.

Mapping measures, concept engineering and preparatory measures for the approval process are currently being implemented at the Harsefeld site. Local dialog is also an important focus. With this in mind, discussions with local stakeholders and various communication and information offerings are being developed.

SaltHy has been classified by the European Union as a Project of Common Interest (PCI). This confirms that the project is a key component of the European energy transition.

Further information and contact

Dipl.-Ing. Gunnar Assmann
Project Manager Hydrogen Storage
Storengy Germany GmbH
salthy@storengy.de
www.salthy.de

About Storengy Germany

HyCAVmobil (Hydrogen Cavern for Mobility) - Investigation of salt caverns as a potential storage site for hydrogen

For a reliable supply of clean hydrogen, a holistic infrastructure must be built, as is also the case with fossil gases. In addition to the expansion or conversion of the grid, this also includes the storage of the gas. How we can reliably store hydrogen in the long term is becoming increasingly important for sector coupling.

The HyCAVmobil project of EWE Gasspeicher GmbH and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Institute for Networked Energy Systems is therefore looking at the sustainable and safe storage of 100 per cent pure hydrogen in salt caverns - a pioneering project.

Currently, salt caverns are used as safe long-term storage for energy sources such as natural gas or crude oil. In the context of the energy transition, this type of storage is now also being considered for hydrogen. In order to store hydrogen in the long term and then use it in the field of fuel cell mobility, the HyCAVmobil (Hydrogen Cavern for Mobility) project will research the conditions under which pure hydrogen can also be stored in salt caverns. The main focus is on how storage and retrieval affect the quality of the hydrogen.

Following initial laboratory-scale investigations, EWE and its Lower Saxony project partner have been building an underground cavern storage facility in Rüdersdorf, Brandenburg, since February 2021. In a first step, a drilling rig is erected and the salt dome is flushed out with water at a depth of 1,000 meters. This will create a cavity of 500 cubic meters, in which up to six tons of hydrogen will be stored in the future. By way of illustration, this quantity is enough to fill up around 1,000 hydrogen cars. If the project is successful, the findings of this project can easily be transferred to caverns with 1,000 times the volume, according to those responsible. That would be an important step toward large-scale hydrogen use.

The project is funded as part of the National Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Innovation Programme and receives a funding grant of around 6 million euros from the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI).