The facility will consist of 19 salt caverns together with hydrogen treatment, compression, dehydration, and transfer facilities, and Costain’s multi-disciplinary engineering team will deliver two front-end engineering and design (FEED) contracts to support its development. The facility will be designed to store a working gas volume of approximately 400 million m3 of hydrogen, equivalent to storing 1300 GWh of hydrogen.
The first FEED will look at solution mining, which will involve water being pumped hundreds of metres underground to dissolve the salt. The resultant brine solution is then extracted to create a cavern, with the salt solution transported from the cavern via existing underground pipelines to local customers.
The second FEED will focus on the gas storage facilities needed to receive hydrogen from the proposed HyNet system, a network of new and existing hydrogen infrastructure in the Northwest of England and North Wales. The design will cover the transportation, compression, and storage of hydrogen within the caverns, as well as its transportation back into the HyNet system.
Costain’s work is expected to complete in 2026 and will inform Storengy UK’s plans for entering the final investment decision (FID) for the project.
Sam White, Managing Director, Natural Resources at Costain, commented: “This is an exciting project that will enable a transformative hydrogen storage facility to improve the UK’s energy resilience and economic prosperity in the Northwest of England. We have decades of experience in delivering salt cavern gas storage facilities and we will apply this knowledge to the rapidly growing hydrogen economy, designing safe and secure storage systems that will be critical to creating a sustainable future. Our longstanding knowledge of the site, and established relationships with the local supply chain, mean we are well placed to deliver designs that have constructability at their heart, paving the way for the scheme to progress smoothly.”
Paul Snary, Hydrogen Director at Storengy UK, said: “The KGSP is a key initiative which, as part of the wider HyNet system, will help decarbonise both industry and energy generation in the Northwest of England and beyond. This is a long-term project involving many local and regional stakeholders, and we are looking forward to drawing on Costain’s expertise and long track record in this space to ensure the engineering and constructability designs meet the requirements, before progressing towards EPCM contracts.”