One of the reasons for developing Power to Gas technology is the variability of renewable energy sources and the impossibility to feed all the produced energy into the grid. Not all the existing electricity grids have enough capacity to carry all of the renewable energy produced on top of energy produced from traditional sources. This requires an alternative way to avoid losses due to the temporary switching-off of solar and wind installations and converting the energy seems to be the best solution. In this case costs and availability of CO2 must be considered.
On the other hand, P2G allows for higher revenues for s-TEG power plants as one can decide, depending on the price, whether to feed electricity or synthetic methane into the grid in a kind of plant where carbon dioxide is available and where its production represents a cost (carbon tax) and a climate threat.
A new frontier is the integration of P2G with biogas production using P2G as biogas upgrading system making conventional upgrading technologies obsolete. Combining an electrolyser with a biogas plant is particularly efficient: converting CO2 contained in biogas almost doubles the amount of methane produced. Energy markets have suffered profound changes in recent years, changes mostly affecting multi-utilities (companies offering services and/or products related to generation and distribution of electricity, methane and environmental services). Decline in demand, overcapacity, oversupply and reduction of marginalization, coupled with increased interest in environmental sustainability, have led companies to undertake strategic and technological efficiency-enhancing processes to tackle change and gain new opportunities.
The electricity producers have to deal with crucial challenges to be competitive, in particular those which suffer fluctuations in demand (and in hourly price of energy) and are interested in reducing CO2 emissions.
ProGeo can be applied in any plant involved in electricity generation, both from fossil and renewable (solar PV, solar CSP, wind, biogas) sources, converting low cost electricity in methane, and transforming a cost (e.g. carbon tax if due) in a revenue. The benefits we are expecting in adopting the ProGeo technology, meeting several market’s needs, are:
• Increase of the profitability of small-TEG power plants;
• Reduction of CO2 emissions by developing processes for CO2 valorization, by converting a cost (the carbon tax) into a revenue (the process product)
• Levelling of energy production profiles, thus improving the efficiency.
