The Hydrogen Battery

Renewable energy sources, by their very nature, are unpredictable. Wind, sea, and sun come and go as they please. We simply intervene where and when we can to soak up energy as it comes to us.

This has posed serious problems since the very beginning. How can we meet fluctuating energy requirements with erratic energy sources?

Controlling the entire climate of planet Earth is probably an option we can put to one side for now, sadly.

The second-best option is much more feasible, and has been the target of research for decades. Batteries, essentially.

Storing energy in lithium-ion batteries, for instance, to give ourselves a buffer between energy generation and usage. But batteries are expensive. On the scale of a hand-drill, they’re ideal. For entire countries? The whole planet? There are more than a few problems here.

Not insurmountable, of course; problems love to be solved. In late 2018, South Australia and Tesla laughed in the face of those problems with an almost £50m project: the largest lithium-ion battery ever created.

An incredible moment, and it’s the first of many. But batteries take a lot of time to manufacture, and they’re much more suited to specific use cases. Using them as a one-size-fits-all solution makes for a fairly poor solution.

Countless research projects across the globe are underway to fill the gaps where they can.

Ørsted, a European green energy company, has taken their own steps forward in the field.

Excess energy from their offshore wind farms power electrolysis equipment, converting water into oxygen and hydrogen.

This hydrogen can then be burned later to generate energy, effectively using hydrogen as a kind of battery. Alternatively, the hydrogen may be passed into industrial sectors or modern transport technology to encourage even further green energy development.