The trend of using solar power and wind power for base load electricity supply purposes is slowly increasing. This can be perceived as a result of the increase in the use of molten salt batteries, and the rapid development of gravel batteries. Several other types of technologies are also being developed and a number of other technologies have been proposed alongside more traditional ones such as solar pumping combined with hydro-storage.

Although natural gas is commonly converted into electricity, the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology have developed some means of renewable electricity. Solar energy can now be used as a substitute for natural gas, which is a source of power for electricity generation.

As told by Dr. Michael Specht of ZSW, the demonstration system in Stuttgart works by separating the water from surplus renewable energy using electrolysis. As a result, hydrogen and oxygen are formed. Then, a chemical reaction of hydrogen with carbon dioxide generates methane, which is actually natural gas, produced synthetically.

When the wind speed is high, wind turbines have the capacity to generate more power than can be utilized. With the introduction of this new technology, it would be possible to save up the green electricity in stock as natural gas or renewable methane to be used later when the need is high.

This can be extremely useful as the climate-neutral methane gas can be stored in existing gas storage facilities, to be used when there are unfavorable conditions, such as night time or calm weather.

Currently, a demonstration system built on behalf of Solar Fuel in Stuttgart is operating successfully and it is expected that by 2012, a significantly larger system providing much more power, will be launched.

Although the efficiency rate of such a converting system is around 60%, it is comparatively better than completely losing the energy which could have been produced.

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