A European consortium has embarked upon a €23.9 million project to design and deploy a 39 MWh energy storage facility in Puglia, Italy.
The INGRID project will see a consortium of seven partners design, build, deploy and operate the hydrogen energy storage installation. The facility will be able to hold more than one ton of safely stored hydrogen—the largest ever built—and will include a fast-responding 1.2 MW hydrogen generator to provide balancing support for the local grid, managed by Enel Distribuzione. Potential value streams for the generated carbon-neutral hydrogen are currently being considered.
Consortium members include Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, the largest privately-owned Italian ICT technology provider, and the project coordinator; Agenzia per la tecnologia e l'Innovazione (ARTI), which represents the operational arm of Puglia’s regional authority for innovation and technology transfer; Enel Distribuzione, Italy's largest electricity distribution company; Belgium’s Hydrogenics, a leading provider of hydrogen generators; France’s McPhy Energy, a leader in technologies for solid and safe hydrogen storage; and the research institutions Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSE) of Italy, and TECNALIA of Spain.
In a statement, the consortium said: “All consortium partners are delighted to be part of this important energy storage project which further substantiates the enabling position of hydrogen technologies for renewable energy integration. The importance that the EU places on hydrogen technologies, that hold the key to solving utility-scale energy storage issues of today and tomorrow, is gratifying for the companies involved.
“The technologies at the core of INGRID project are well placed and proven to enable greater renewable power generation around the globe.”
The project will be granted with a financial contribution of €13.8 million by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme for European Research and Innovation, and will take four years to complete.
