France building Jupiter 1000 1MW Power-to-Gas project; connected to gas network
20 December 2017
The first Power-to-Gas project connected to the French gas transportation network—Jupiter 1000—is being built in Fos-sur-Mer. This 1 MW demonstrator will enable the transition from the concept phase to an industrial tool. The purpose of the project is to test the technical and economic viability of Power-to-Gas, by detecting and dealing with any technical, economic or regulatory difficulties, in order to reduce long-term investment and operating costs, and allow the deployment of a new wide-scale renewable gas production segment.
Coordinated by GRTgaz, this project involves a group of French partners with complementary areas of expertise: McPhy for electrolysis; Atmostat and the CEA (French atomic energy commission) for the methanation reactor; Leroux & Lotz for the CO2 capture technology; the CEA for the R&D; CNR for the supplying of surplus renewables and ensuring the future remote management of the facility; RTE for the processing of electrical data; and GRTgaz and TIGF to manage the injection into gas networks.
GRTgaz owns and operates more than 32,000 km (20,000 miles) of buried pipelines in France and 28 compressor stations to transport gas between suppliers and consumers.
McPhy will supply two electrolyzers—one alkaline, one PEM—to convert surplus renewable electricity into hydrogen. The project represents the first comparison of these two technologies on an industrial scale and under the same usage conditions.
The project will inject 200 m3/h of hydrogen into the gas network, and also run a stream of the gas through a methanation reactor where, with captured CO2, it will be converted to methane—which will also be injected into the gas transportation network.
Jupiter 1000 to due to go live in 2018. The project is co-financed by the European Union as part of the ERDF Fund, by the State in the framework of Future Investments entrusted to ADEME and by the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur Region.
McPhy offers a range of electrolyzers ranging from 04 to 400 Nm3/h (and above with several electrolyzers operating in parallel), over a range of pressures from 1 to 30 bar.
If you pay a lot for methane, have low cost renewable power and get the CO2 from land fill and water treatment it could work.
Posted by: SJC | 20 December 2017 at 12:16 PM
Good move, this will reduce the actual natgas imports.
Meanwhile in India, they are planning to promote Methanol stoves.
Posted by: Account Deleted | 20 December 2017 at 05:40 PM
SJC,
A move like this, especially in France, is not driven by large commercial interest, or because there is a belief that synthetic methane will become cheaper than fossil methane any time soon.
Instead - in my view - it is driven by a belief that once synthetic methane has been demonstrated at a reasonable cost and with a path for further cost reduction, it will pave the way for a ban of fossil natural gas and move to synthetic nat gas for those consumers remaining.
It also doubles as an effective measure to get out from under the natural gas thumb of Putin or whomever succeeds him.
Don't forget, the Paris agreement was signed in France ;-) So they better do something about it.
Contrary to the US, there is an actual political will to do something about anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission in Europe.
For a gas company, this is also the natural way to go to 1) hedge your bets, and 2) stay relevant in a market where wind a solar dominate all new capacity being installed.
The world (or at least Europe) will need hydrocarbons as fuels for some processes (air planes) and as long term (seasonal and year-to-year) backup and storage of energy with near-100% renewable energy generation in the coming decades.
V2G will most likely soak up all energy storage demand for up to a week or so, once large-scale adoption of BEVs kick in. But for longer time-scales, I have seen no substitute for hydrocarbons, yet, in terms of storage-able, deploy-able energy source.
Posted by: Thomas Pedersen | 21 December 2017 at 08:00 AM
Whatever..
Posted by: SJC | 21 December 2017 at 09:15 AM
V2G can't soak up a week's worth of energy demand.
Ponder an all-electric US fleet, 250m vehicles @ 100 kWh/vehicle. That's 25 TWh. The USA's average power consumption is about 0.45 TW, so you're talking a little over 2 days... assuming (a) all the batteries start out at 100% charge and (b) nobody drives anywhere.
V2G is excellent for grid regulation on a minute-by-minute basis. At some point it becomes suitable as a buffer so that powerplants can be turned off instead of being required for spinning reserve (starting at about 15 minutes of reserve capacity). A week? Not happening.
As for P2G, there have been several pilots around the 1 MW level already. If P2G had any potential, new efforts would be aiming at 10 MW or more and aiming for GW-scale in a few years. This continued piddling around with a mere megawatt shows that everyone involved knows it's just greenwashing.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 21 December 2017 at 11:27 AM
EP,
Of course, V2G can't soak up a week's worth of energy demand.
However, the storage demand is much less than the energy demand, because all renewable energy sources do not drop to zero for a week.
In my country the average house-hold power demand is roughly 10 kWh. It's not too far out to assume that BEVs 10-15 years from now will average a capacity on the order of 100 kWh, of which perhaps 20-30% can be used by the power utility company for storage, given the right incentives.
I guess I also left out the assumption that it will become more feasible to shift electricity consumption in time to catch most of the daily swings. A/Cs for instance could be fitted with cold storage to make the most use of cheap solar power in the middle of the day. Yes, that would require a larger compressor and higher power draw, making it particularly well suited along with solar panels on the roof. There are many options to time-shift energy consumption for change-of-temperature use on the time-scale of hours.
But then again, this might never happen because the house A/C constitutes a trivial power draw from a 100 kWh battery.
No doubt, going 100% (more likely 90%) renewable is much easier in Europe with denser population and better power grid. The giga-Watts that need to be moved has to move less distance and can be paid for by more people, using less electricity than in the US.
There is a techno-economical optimum between moving electricity from cloudy to sunny places and simply storing electricity locally for the period it takes the sun to come back.
Btw, Audi is doing the same P2G scheme to off-set the consumption of their compressed gas cars. Here we're really talking greenwashing because here the purpose is to count those vehicles as zero-emission (CO2) to enable sales of more A8 gas guzzlers without the European fleet average.
Posted by: Thomas Pedersen | 21 December 2017 at 05:38 PM
Europe has the handicap of dense populations. Diffuse energy sources like wind are good for a fraction of a watt per square meter of surface, so fewer square meters per capita limits how much total energy they can supply.
I'm surprised that Audi is going SNG and not H2FC; the FCs are cheaper to feed and more high-tech.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 22 December 2017 at 10:55 AM
Power-to-Gas makes sense where you want to store (for short and long periods) large amount of e-energy form excess/surplus REs including nuclear and hydro.
The syn-gas produced could stored and/or be mixed with NG and used for heating/cooking and to produce H2 for FCs and FCEVs.
Well managed, a much higher percentage of REs, nuke and hydro production could be used on a 24/7 basis.
Posted by: HarveyD | 24 December 2017 at 11:04 AM
Power-to-gas isn't "storage". It's "greenwashed wastage".
Consider an advanced electrolyzer operating at 73% efficiency. Producing 1 kg of H2 requires 46 kWh. Reacting CO2 with H2 to make 1 kg of methane (50 MJ LHV) plus water requires 4 H2 molecules per CO2:
CO2 + 4 H2 -> CH4 + 2 H2O
This reaction requires .5 kg H2 (23 kWH) to make 1 kg of methane (50 MJ/13.9 kWh LHV). Burn this methane in a CCGT at 60% efficiency and your net output is 8.33 kWh(e). This is 36.2% round-trip efficiency, not including whatever energy you had to expend to capture the CO2.
When you're losing 64% of your input energy before you get it out again, you're doing more wasting than storing.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 24 December 2017 at 03:42 PM
@EP
In Europe, district heating is fairly common in cities. Thus, P2G efficiency can be calculated with the electricity -> gas > electricity + heat pathway (co-generation). That is up to 54% efficient according to wikipedia, not 36% as you quote.
40-50% efficiency is perfectly OK for seasonal/deep storage if the cost is right. RE generation is getting stupidly cheap, so P2G looks to become increasingly viable to me. Since most components needed for P2G is fairly low-tech and high-level of automation seems possible, capex and opex should not be prohibiting.
Given the fact the most of Europe already has fully built-out natgas infrastructure (lots of gas based generation assets + huge, full-winter-length storage), that should limit the necessary investment to the P2G generator plants themselves.
Posted by: soltesza | 25 December 2017 at 06:48 AM
That's only true if you need heat and electricity
Any other time, you've got wastage of heat or loss of efficiency. Turning electricity into heat at 100% efficiency is wasteful enough; turning it into heat at 60% efficiency at ridiculous capital cost is a crime.
If that was true, German electric rates would be half of what they are.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 25 December 2017 at 12:26 PM
Another solution is to do like a well know US eastern State is doing and build 2 new nuclear plants at $30 B (and probably a lot more before they are fully commissioned) and sell electricity @ around $0.30/kWh (with various government subsidies)?
After almost 15 years of design and construction, the final results will be very close to similar new nuclear sites being built in England, France, Finland etc.
Those examples may be enough to convince Japan, France, Germany, USA, China, Canada and many others to add more REs to remove/replace their older NPPs?
Posted by: HarveyD | 26 December 2017 at 09:39 AM
Even though the process itself looks horribly complex and inefficient the effort may still be worthwhile.
The cost of storing and distributing the gases is already paid; that infrastructure - already built - is a big, big, plus for NG or SNG in France.
But E-P is correct, you first must have the RE. And does France really want to repeat the German experience with wind and solar? And how much must the grid be changed to move the RE to specific sites where the SNG is generated.
Yes, in the US new nuclear plant costs are unbearable while construction never seems to end. That wasn't true fifty years ago either here or abroad.
Posted by: Ken | 26 December 2017 at 11:48 AM
Current 1000+ MW CPPs cost too much and take too many year to plan, develop and finish/commission.
The only way to beat higher unbearable NPPs construction cost may be with standardized updated, mass produced (factory built) smaller, transportable units.
The excess heat produced could be used to heat greenhouses, buildings, streets and sidewalks in snowy cold cities.
Posted by: HarveyD | 26 December 2017 at 01:48 PM
You can thank Democrats and "environmentalists" (watermelons in the pay of fossil-fuel interests) for that. These problems do not crop up where politics isn't allowed to disrupt the process or second-guess decisions already made and contracts signed. The failure of the V.C. Summer expansion is substantially due to one political actor, NRC commissioner Gregory Jaczko. He forced the imposition of the brand-new aircraft impact rule on the two AP1000 projects in the US, forcing the redesign of the shield buildings and their foundations AFTER contracts had been signed. Westinghouse (Toshiba) had its own issues with project management, but government meddling was no help whatsoever.
There are also four AP1000s under construction in China. The first ones have already completed hot functional testing and will start early next year. The S. Korean units under construction in the UAE are on budget and schedule. Russian VVERs are much the same. That's the difference between regulatory regimes.
Fifty years ago the motto of the Sierra Club was "Atoms Not Dams". Then ARCO executive Robert Anderson bankrolled the founding of anti-nuclear Friends of the Earth, and the war of the fossil interests on nuclear was on.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 26 December 2017 at 03:20 PM
I always am troubled by governments picking winners, or regulating others out of existence.
Sure some technology is better than others, but the free market is a decisive force, even if it is slow to react.
No matter how many studies, or how many reports are made, the truth is always muddied with someone's agendas.
China is a clear exception to all of this, but that may just the advantage it has over capitalist nations. They could build 30 new nuclear reactors within five years time if they wanted to, and they could probably pull it off. The amount of labor and will power they put behind their projects is always staggering.
This project is green washing, maybe not a total waste, they might learn something. Like, this isn't effective.
I much rather have a nuclear plant than a dam, dams interrupt nature, not just in the body of water they create, but in everything that depended on the water. I think it's appalling that dam hydro is considered a renewable.
EP, i think the reason for nuclear power plants decline is due to public misunderstanding. That and the nuclear lobby doesn't pay that well. Also media plays into our paranoia, just like people today are afraid of hydrogen, with pictures of a blimp painted in rocket fuel is burned into thier memory.
One project i would like to see is geothermal, we have great resources here in the states, it isn't weather dependent, and it can be reliable for a base load. That, and we might actually save the world by deheating a super volcano in the process.
I think the US should do large scale infrastructure like China. The EU could stand to collaborate on similar projects too.
Posted by: CheeseEater88 | 27 December 2017 at 07:12 AM
the US should do large scale infrastructure like China..
If we were not $20 trillion in debt we could.
Posted by: SJC | 27 December 2017 at 10:58 AM
You can tell that with calculations done on the back of an envelope. You don't have to actually build one until you have hardware so that the numbers work out. The only reason to do a megawatt here, a megawatt there and so on is to have something you're appearing to be doing: greenwashing.
Congratulations, you're an ecomodernist. Living lightly upon nature means minimizing what you take.
You're far too charitable. The public misunderstands because it has been the target of a disinformation campaign for almost 5 decades now, and until recently there was no force dedicated to fighting back.
There is NO nuclear lobby. All the nuclear companies make more money from other ventures and are willing to sell whatever adds to the bottom line. We just saw Westinghouse (Toshiba) go bankrupt trying to promote energy from uranium. Note that no such problems are happening with the Chinese builds of almost identical designs. The biggest problem is the disinformation campaign and the political actors behind it, who put their people into place to block and destroy what the engineers try to build.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 27 December 2017 at 04:16 PM
Hydro Quebec has sold an average of $2,000,000/day of very low cost ($0.04 to $0.10 kWh) clean Hydro/Wind e-energy to Eastern NE USA States.
The current extended very cold wave (10C to 15C below normal) is a challenge and an opportunity for QH. Peak demand will reach 45+ KGW after holidays. Luckily, Wind farms are producing more during winter months and water reservoirs are full due to more rain and snow in 2017.
This clean energy export will be progressively increased with new connections being built in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Ontario will also be supplied with enough clean energy during the 20+ years required to refurbish their 18 CANDU NPPs on a rotation basis (2 units at a time).
QH may have to add up to 10 KHW of Hydro and Wind energy plants to meet increasing demands in the next 10+ years.
Posted by: HarveyD | 31 December 2017 at 08:27 AM
At the lowest price you give, that would be 50 million kWh per day or just over 2 GW average. This is a tiny fraction of demand.
45 kilo-gigawatts is 45 terawatts. Total generating capacity on the N. American grid is not much more than 1 TW; in short, you have no idea what you're talking about. As usual.
smh.Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 01 January 2018 at 06:00 AM