Hydrogen key technology to cover the energy storage needs of NEOM City

NEOM City is supposed to be a renewable-energy-only city in Saudi Arabia. The project has planned a huge capacity of non-dispatchable wind and solar photovoltaic but has not addressed yet the issue of a long time, large storage of energy. Battery energy storage is the only product off-the-shelf, and we know already only works for the storage of small amounts of energy over short time frames. The other solutions for energy storage are not off-the-shelf products, but in many cases, only nice ideas to be proven workable. The only other opportunity to make NEOM a truly renewable-energy-only City today is to use the extra wind and solar photovoltaic power to produce hydrogen through electrolyzers, and then partially use this hydrogen to produce the missing electricity to stabilize the grid, and export the excess hydrogen. Adopting extra wind and solar photovoltaic to make NEOM a hydrogen production hub in addition to a renewable-energy-only city is an even more attractive proposition. As NEOM has not fully acknowledged this issue, same as the sci-entific community, the most likely solution without an urgent debate within the scientific community will be to import electricity from the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels while paying carbon credits, with is inconsistent with the renewable-energy-only aspiration.

Automated summary

NEOM City plans to be a renewable-energy-only city, but the issue of long-term, large-scale energy storage has not been addressed. Battery energy storage can only handle small amounts of energy, and other solutions are still in the idea stage. The most attractive solution is to use extra wind and solar energy to produce hydrogen, which can be used to stabilize the grid and export excess energy.