Electricity generation from variable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar has grown in some countries at such a high rate that long‐term storage becomes relevant. The main rationale of power‐to‐gas (P2G) conversion of excess power is that the capacity of the gas pipelines and gas storage is much higher than that of the electricity transmission lines. This paper investigates the market prospects of hydrogen and methane from P2G conversion as a long‐term electricity storage option. Of specific interest is the future development of investment costs, economies‐of‐scale, the impact of the electricity price, and its distribution as well as possible locations. We conclude that from an economic point‐of‐view, the future prospects of all P2G technologies are much less promising than currently indicated in several papers and discussions. It will become very hard for P2G to compete in the electricity markets despite a high technological learning potential. However, for both hydrogen and methane, there are prospects for use in the transport sector. Already today compressed gas vehicles are by and large competitive.

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关于燃气发电技术的长期前景

在某些国家，来自可变的可再生能源（例如风能和太阳能）的发电量以很高的速度增长，因此长期存储变得至关重要。多余功率的电力到天然气（P2G）转换的主要理由是，天然气管道和储气库的容量远高于输电线路的容量。本文研究了将P2G转化为氢和甲烷作为长期电力存储选项的市场前景。特别令人感兴趣的是投资成本，规模经济，电价的影响，其分布以及可能的位置的未来发展。我们得出的结论是，从经济角度来看，所有P2G技术的未来前景都比目前几篇论文和讨论中所指出的前景要差得多。尽管具有很高的技术学习潜力，但P2G在电力市场中竞争将变得非常困难。但是，对于氢气和甲烷，在运输领域都有使用前景。如今，压缩气体汽车已经具有很大的竞争力。