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NETWORK / 26 / JULY/AUGUST 2018 I TM Power's recent feasi- bility study, carried out in collaboration with North- ern Gas Networks, yielded some compelling results about the gas network's capacity to support this green technology. Funding for the study was secured from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) last year, as part of its Energy Storage Feasibility Study Competition launched in January 2017. As the UK moves towards a low-carbon future, the whole energy systems approach is gaining in support. By exploring the interac - TECHNOLOGY tions of different energy types – power, heat, transport – to better understand their interde- pendencies, the approach aims to solve all three challenges of the energy trilemma: delivering a secure supply of low-carbon energy, at a lower cost for the customer. Until recently, energy storage has been largely dominated by the use of batteries to store electrical energy. While power- to-gas is growing in popularity in Europe, it remains relatively unknown, and untested, in the UK. This cutting-edge energy storage technology is capable of absorbing surplus power from the electricity grid at times when supply exceeds demand, and when intermittent renew - able generation causes network stability problems. Through an electrolyser, electrical power is converted to chemical energy in the form of hydrogen which can then be injected and stored in the gas network from Megawatt to Gigawatt scale. The gas network then be - comes a giant renewable energy store for use in heat, electric- ity generation or transport via hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Back in April, Sheffield-based clean energy company ITM Power released the results of its power-to-gas feasibility study, funded by BEIS, and carried out in collaboration with Northern Gas Networks. The desktop study was produced using network plan - ning models and data from the gas distributor for the North of England. As renewable electricity increases in the UK, effective storage and transmission of excess power is set to become ever more important. The ITM study demonstrates an opportunity available to the UK to take a lead in green energy storage and clean gas so - lutions, with blended hydrogen helping to decarbonise the heat ITM demonstrating their electrolyser at the InTEGReL site. Storing energy Technologies such as power-to-gas offer the opportunity to store energy for long periods at scale for electricity networks, and provide an important decarbonisation strategy for heat. This article examines the technology.