Like many Hydrogen storage schemes this one has been around for years under different guises.
The vision involves constructing vast new salt caverns beneath the former naval base at Portland Port in order to store hydrogen.
Hydrogen is set to play an important role as the country moves towards cutting carbon emissions and net zero. Such gas reserves could be utilised as a back up for other forms of renewable energy.
Portland Port has been working with prospective developers to realize the opportunity of such a facility ever since a proposal was put forward by Portland Gas. That scheme was granted planning permission by Dorset County Council in 2008 but never progressed.
A gas storage facility on the Isle of Portland has been considered for many years. In 2008, a project to build salt caverns for natural gas storage received planning approval. UKEn has revived and upgraded this project for the 21st century hydrogen economy, signing a lease with Portland Port and acquiring the Intellectual Property (IP) for the previous project.
The facility’s design has been improved and enhanced to minimise its carbon footprint, make it pure hydrogen ready and capable of full integration with green hydrogen production from offshore and onshore renewables from inception. Its cavern design includes the most modern safety considerations learned primarily from European salt cavern design and operation.
Laying above the thickest onshore section of the Dorset Triassic salt deposit, the salt cavern facility aims to provide around 6.5-10TWh of working storage per year, understood to be around 10-20% of the UK’s 2050 estimated hydrogen storage demand.
The storage site will also be strategically located near SGN’s planned H2 Connect hydrogen pipeline, linking the facility directly to the planned Solent Cluster and the wider southern UK hydrogen supercluster.
