RWE Gas Storage West GmbH (RGSW) is starting to market free storage capacity in the hydrogen storage facility currently under construction at the Gronau-Epe site in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. For this, RGSW is launching a binding tender on 16 June. The tender is aimed at companies that want to secure available storage capacity for hydrogen from 1 January 2028.

Construction work on Germany's first commercial hydrogen storage facility is already underway. RWE will fill the first cavern with hydrogen from mid-2026. At the same time, hydrogen will be used to press the brine out of a second cavern so that it can also be used for storage. Once completed, the storage facility with its two caverns will have an injection and withdrawal capacity of 50,000 cubic metres per hour and a working gas volume of around 38 million cubic metres. Around 70% of this has already been marketed. Commercial storage operations will start on 1 July 2027.

The current tender is for the 30% storage capacity that will not be available until 2028 for technical reasons. In a market survey in spring 2025, RGSW asked potential customers about their requirements. The findings have been incorporated into the tender.

Transport and storage infrastructure will play a key role in the ramp-up of the hydrogen economy: storage facilities help to buffer fluctuations in hydrogen production from wind and solar energy. This will enable hydrogen produced in the future to be made available to industrial customers as needed.

Further information on the RWE Epe-H₂ hydrogen storage facility can be found here.