In the north-east Germany territory more than 30% of the consumed electricity is produced by wind turbines. But the grids are weak ones. So, the idea of the project of the ENERTRAG AG is to use hydrogen as an energy carrier for storing electricity and reconvert it to back-up power and/or sell it as fuel:
For a wind farm being able to supply the grid with prognosticated power, the electrolyser works as a variable consumer of wind electricity, if the wind exceed the expected speed, otherwise a reconversion in a biogas-hydrogen CHP delivers the missed capacity. Intelligent coupling with a biogas power plant enlarges the feasible difference between prognosticated and real wind speed or turns the focus to fuel delivery. Modeling of the different operation modes using wind values of past years shows the benefit of the system – a drastic reduction of the unavailability of the system with regard to the predicted power production.