Power Conversion Technologies: The Advent of Power‐to‐Gas, Power‐to‐Liquid, and Power‐to‐Heat

Summary

Decreasing levelized costs of renewable electricity coupled with expanding deployment are enabling a rapid reduction in the carbon intensity of the electrical grid. However, this transition is occurring more slowly in other sectors, including transportation and manufacturing. Power‐to‐X technologies provide a means to accelerate this transition in those sectors by converting renewable electricity into chemical energy and heat. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the existing and emerging Power‐to‐X technologies covering the production of methane (hydrogen is covered in Chapter 5) (i.e. Power‐to‐Gas), chemicals and fuels (e.g. ammonia, carbon monoxide, ethylene, methanol, ethanol, and formic acid), and heat (e.g. for industrial and building applications); discuss the overarching and technology‐specific challenges and opportunities; and highlight the implications of deployment of Power‐to‐X technologies on power generation. We emphasize that Power‐to‐X technologies do exist today at various stages of development and commercialization and that a transition to lower carbon intensity for the transportation and manufacturing sectors is possible, but it requires immense growth of the electrical grid and appropriate systems design and operations.