Opportunities and constraints of hydrogen energy storage systems
Open accessAbstract
In contrast to battery storage systems, power-to-hydrogen-to-power (P-H 2-P) storage systems provide opportunities to separately optimize the costs and efficiency of the system’s charging, storage, and discharging components. The value of capital cost reduction relative to round-trip efficiency improvements of P-H 2-P systems is not well understood in electricity systems with abundant curtailed power. Here, we used a macro-energy model to evaluate the sensitivity of system costs to techno-economic characteristics of P-H 2-P systems in stylized wind-solar-battery electricity systems with restricted natural gas generation. Assuming current costs and current round-trip P-H 2-P efficiencies, least-cost wind and solar electricity systems had large amounts of excess variable renewable generation capacity. These systems included P-H 2-P in the least-cost solution, despite its low round-trip efficiency and relatively high P-H 2-P power discharge costs. These electricity system costs were not highly sensitive to the efficient use of otherwise-curtailed power, but were sensitive to the capital cost of the P-H 2-P power discharge component. If the capital costs of the charging and discharging components were decreased relative to generation costs, curtailment would decrease, and electricity system costs would become increasingly sensitive to improvements in the P-H 2-P round-trip efficiency. These results suggest that capital cost reductions, especially in the discharge component, provide a key opportunity for innovation in P-H 2-P systems for applications in electricity systems dominated by wind and solar generation. Analysis of underground salt cavern storage constraints in U.S.-based wind and solar scenarios suggests that ample hydrogen storage capacity could be obtained by repurposing the depleted natural gas reservoirs that are currently used for seasonal natural gas storage.
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- Authors
- Dowling, J. A., Ruggles, T. H., Virgüez, E. A., Reich, N. D., Ifkovits, Z. P., Davis, S. J., Li, A. X., Kennedy, K. M., Rinaldi, K. Z., Duan, L., Caldeira, K., & Lewis, N. S.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Carnegie Institution for Science (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Environmental Research: Energy
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2024-07-22
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 035004
- ISSN
- 2753-3751 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4399758895
- Semantic Scholar
- cc9c067759b5728baefb34331d08bbc01984344d
- Cited by
- 10
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 2
- FWCI
- 0.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environmental Research Energy (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Gift from Gates Ventures LLC to the Carnegie Institution for Science
- Fellowship from SoCalGas in support of Low Carbon Energy Science and Policy
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Energy Engineering and Power Technology › Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Integrated Energy Systems Optimization
- Physical Sciences › Energy › Energy Engineering and Power Technology › Power Systems and Renewable Energy
- Keywords
- hydrogen energy storage, round-trip efficiency, capital cost reduction, techno-economic analysis
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