Ed’s Note: Residential power-to-gas project in Rotterdam

Last week, Enlit on the Road was in Rotterdam, discovering how the energy transition is evolving in this fine Dutch city. Long story short… it is evolving spectacularly. There was a specific power-to-gas project, however, that caught our attention.

Tessa Hillen, energy transition analyst at Stedin, discussed with us the Power to Gas project in Rozenburg, which is a collaboration between the Dutch DSO Stedin and the French DSO GRDF.

The project has multiple focus points. Firstly, it aims to demonstrate that it is possible to produce natural gas from electricity with the method of electrolysis. “You can do a lot on paper, but we want to actually put it into practice” says Tessa. Stedin, together with DNV GL, came up with a plan to create a testing ground in Rozenburg.

Secondly, “the green hydrogen we produce here is used to power a boiler to heat a residential building complex” says Tessa “and is actually distributed through a very average natural gas pipeline”. Using the already existent pipeline with just a couple of adjustments is actually a third focus point for the project.

Last focus point, but certainly not least, since according to Tessa is one of the challenges of deploying hydrogen on larger scale, is the smell. Natural gas is senseless and so is hydrogen. In order to be able to detect leaks, the engineers do need the smell.

And the reason why Tessa and her team are looking for a new odour, is because the already existent one has sulphur in it, “and sulphur is really damaging to hydrogen fuel cells”.

“If we want to have hydrogen fuel cells connected to the gas grid in the future, we want to have them sulphur free” she adds.

As for what is up in the future? Tessa tells us that “the next step in scaling up hydrogen will be converting the first village in 2025, where over 600 households will make the conversion from natural gas to hydrogen”.

Given the latest developments in Europe, this project sounds to me like a good plan for our collective futures. Don’t you agree?

Cheers, Areti

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