Underground Hydrogen Storage

One of the great advantages of hydrogen is its capacity to store excess energy for later use, but the gas itself also has to be stored. To this end, German energy company EWE is constructing an underground storage facility in the municipality of Rüdersdorf east of Berlin.

The planned facility will be capable of holding six tons of hydrogen a thousand meters below the earth’s surface. It will be built in part on an existing system.

“We already operate caverns for storing natural gas on this site and have the necessary infrastructure at our disposal to deal with, transform and sensible use energy imported from the coast,” EWE CEO Stefan Dohler told business newspaper Handelsblatt.

The facility will cost EUR 10 million, with EWE paying four million and the German government funding the rest of the project. The facility is due to be operational in two years.