Combining battery storage and gas for the energy transition

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Solar and wind energy made up 14% of the worldwide electricity mix in 2023. However, their use continues to rely on additional solutions to bridge gaps when the sun isn’t shining or there’s a lull in the breeze.

“Solar and wind energy are volatile and the peaks in electricity generation do not always coincide with the peaks in demand,” explains Andreas Görtz, Head of Sustainable Solutions at Rolls-Royce Power Systems. “More energy storage is urgently needed in order to balance out these fluctuations and always be able to use the electricity generated.”

Battery energy storage solutions (BESS) can be used to store surplus solar and wind energy when it is abundantly available and feed it back into the grid later when demand is higher. In the event of sudden peaks in demand or unexpected outages, battery storage systems can also react quickly – suppling or absorbing energy in fractions of a second – and provide emergency backup power at short notice. This is crucial for ensuring the grid stability.

Large-scale battery storage solutions to meet ramp up in demand

Experts predict that up to 700 gigawatt hours of battery storage capacity could be available worldwide by 2035 – more than half of it in China – with capacities expected to be in the terawatt range by 2050.

Our mtu EnergyPack QG supplies large-scale storage solutions consisting of modular units for capacity and output and can be flexibly configured. Today, large-scale mtu battery storage systems are currently being built in the Netherlands and in Turkey. In both plants, our intelligent mtu EnergetIQ control system ensures these systems can be used efficiently and therefore profitably.

“Our expertise lies not just in supplying the individual components, but in linking them together and operating them intelligently so that our customers can achieve maximum performance with them,” explains Andreas.

Gas-fired and hydrogen power plants enabling grid stability

Today, the UK capacity market is considered one of the most modern in the world. Here, fluctuations in solar and wind energy are compensated with not only batteries but gas-fired power plants, as well. Power plant operators are remunerated for maintaining capacities that they can flexibly ramp up when they are needed.

In the future, these power plants will be able to generate electricity through hydrogen as well as gas, enabling an even lower-carbon solution. There are already more than 500 hydrogen-ready mtu gas gensets in use in the UK today and the trend is rising sharply.

“This is not yet in demand, but as soon as green hydrogen is available in larger quantities, our customers will have the opportunity to generate energy with our engines completely CO₂-free,” explains Tobias Ostermaier, Head of the Rolls-Royce PowerGen business.

Hydrogen could then serve as long-term storage. Hydrogen power plants in combination with electrolysers and a well-developed hydrogen infrastructure would become an important element of grid stability.

Bringing low-carbon solutions together

Increasingly, there are applications in which battery storage and gas engines are used together in microgrids that enable a self-sufficient energy supply. The base load is usually supplied by renewable energy sources like solar. If no solar power is available, the batteries in which the unused energy was previously stored step in.

Microgrids can be supplemented by an electricity generator powered by diesel, gas or hydrogen. These are always available as a reliable source of energy and turn the microgrid into a reliable energy network.

Tobias says :

We are still at the beginning, but it is fascinating to see how our products are playing their part in making an almost 100 percent climate-neutral energy supply possible. ”

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