The Energy Challenge

Wind and solar are scaling fast. That is good news. But producing clean electricity is only half the job - the other half is making it reliable.

In summer, we often have surplus renewable power. In winter, energy demand increases while solar output is low and wind can drop for days. This is why many power grids still rely on a second system in the background: backup generators that step in when the weather does not cooperate. Too often, that backup is still fossil-based.

I started ShipTown because I don’t think we should accept that trade-off.

We need to store the good days for the hard days,  and we need to do it at scale. Underground storage, such as caverns, is one of the few proven ways to store large amounts of energy cost-effectively. It can also serve as a strategic reserve when the grid is under stress.

I am pragmatic about tools. If you only need storage for less than about four hours, a conventional battery is usually the simplest and most efficient choice.

Beyond that, a different approach is needed. The H-Battery is a reversible system that turns electricity into hydrogen when power is abundant, and turns hydrogen back into electricity when power is scarce. There are, of course, conversion losses. But the waste heat can be recovered for district heating. The goal is simple: reliable, clean power when society needs it most.

And there is one more aspect that matters to me. 

When the system generates electricity, it uses oxygen from ambient air. That air contains CO₂. As part of the​ power generation process, most of that CO₂ is captured - typically around 80% of the CO₂ in the processed air stream. In this way, CO₂ capture becomes a by-product of delivering clean electricity, not a separate project postponed to later stages. 

As I sometimes put it: do something useful for the climate - turn on the air conditioning.

That is the future I want to help build: renewable energy systems that are not only clean and affordable, but also reliable, without requiring a fossil system running in parallel ‘just in case’, and with the potential to become CO₂-negative.