“The MYRTE platform allows us to get out of the laboratory and test our technology in a real environment,” said Jerome Gosset, a VP in the company’s hydrogen and energy storage division. “It is our first installation at this maturity level, connected to the electricity network. This day is the beginning of a new chapter for the BU: we will now on be in operational exploitation of such systems.”

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The driving force behind these efforts is the need to match energy supply and demand, a task that becomes more difficult for grid operators as renewables, with their variability in production, become a bigger part of the mix. For solar, storage could help a system maintain steady performance even if clouds obscure the sun briefly, or could even extend power production into the evening hours, when solar radiation begins to fade but demand is often high.

With wind, a frequent problem is that production surges late at night, when demand is low. Pumped storage is one way of storing such energy for later use – the wind power is used to move water up a hill, where it can stored, and then released as needed to create energy by driving turbines as it comes down the hill. But there are geographic and transmission hurdles to come with this technique, and fuel cells could offer greater flexibility.

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