Power-to-gas: Key technology for the success of sustainable energy

As the use of wind and solar energy becomes more widespread, increasingly larger quantities of surplus electricity which cannot be fed into the power grid will be produced at times when there is a great deal of wind or sunshine. On the other hand, there may also be a shortfall in supplies when there is little sun or wind as conventional power stations are being dismantled for the sustainable energy era. Developing energy storage systems is thus one of the greatest challenges of the energy transition. One interesting approach is the power-to-gas technology. This process can be used to produce hydrogen from surplus wind and solar electricity using electrolysis of water. This hydrogen is then either used directly or mixed with carbon dioxide from a biogas system and is converted into methane gas. While existing power-to-gas projects have been using a chemical-catalytic approach to methanation, the Viessmann Group company MicrobEnergy has developed a new microbiological process, which now works on a large scale. The methane, which is produced by highly specialized microorganisms, has been fed into the national gas grid since March of this year.