ENGINEERINGNET.EU - "P2G - Power-to-Gas - will play an increasingly important role in our future energy system, as it reduces temporal surpluses of renewable power by converting these surpluses into gases", state the eleven founders in an official press release.
The idea: as the power generation from wind and solar fluctuates, the match between renewable power supply and demand is becoming more challenging.
In periods when the supply of renewable power is larger than the grid capacity or the actual electricity demand, a gas infrastructure can accommodate this by converting large volumes of (otherwise useless) electricity into gas, that can be delivered directly to industrial and/or private end users.
As a result, P2G enables the share of renewables in the energy mix to increase, making this innovation an important topic in achieving a carbon-neutral gas supply in 2050. P2G is of particular interest for the North Sea area as its on- and off-shore natural gas infrastructure is well developed.
In addition, the combined generating capacity of offshore wind farms on the North Sea could reach around 100 GW by the year 2030, while the PV capacity installed in the countries surrounding the North Sea is expected to increase from 35 GW in 2012 to almost 60 GW in 2020.
The North Sea Power to Gas Platform presents itself a 'joint body', based on an integrated network of stakeholders. It included a number of very large energy and engineering companies, such as Fluxys and Hydrogenics (Belgium); Energinet.dk and Maersk Oil (Denmark); DNV Kema, Alliander, Gasunie and TenneT (Netherlands); ITM Power and National Grid (UK); and Open Grid Europe (Germany).
