With 100 million francs for green electricity: Billionaire Wyss wants to alleviate winter electricity shortages

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Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, 87, residing in the US, is wary of media coverage, especially in connection with fake emails sent on his behalf. The focus should be primarily on the activities of the “Wyss Foundation”, a non-profit organization based in the US capital, Washington DC, that is heavily involved in nature conservation.

Wyss also has its eyes on environmental protection initiatives in its former homeland, Switzerland. He is said to have encouraged two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH and EPFL) in Zurich and Lausanne to develop a research project to improve electricity storage. This was presented as part of the Swiss Economic Forum, as “NZZ” states.

hydrogen as a solution

The starting point is that while Switzerland tends to have very little electricity in the winter, a large amount of excess electricity is repeatedly produced in the summer. But currently, seasonal storage of electricity is underworked or too expensive.

As part of a project originally budgeted at CHF 100 million, ETH and EPFL will find a solution to this problem. In this way, hydrogen is produced with the excess of summer electricity. This is used with CO₂ converted from industrial processes to green methanol or methane. This provides better savings.

It is the job of universities to explore how these processes and related challenges can be resolved. By 2028, demonstration systems in the megawatt range should be available.

The money comes from Wyss, but there are also talks with the federal government and various cantons. Project partners are Swiss airline and power company Alpiq, as well as research groups from ETH, EPFL, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and the Swiss Federal Materials Testing and Research Laboratories (Empa).

The initiators emphasize that the goal is not an electric self-sufficient Switzerland. The electricity deal with the EU remains central.

Source :Blick