Waste not, want not: how hydrogen can prevent clean energy curtailment
As national economies add more renewables to their energy mix, they face a growing problem: wasted, or curtailed, power. The ageing grid infrastructure in many countries was not designed to handle the amount of intermittent power coming from wind and solar farms, so operators are paid to switch their facilities off on particularly windy or sunny days, often at a great cost to consumers.
Take Britain for example. According to analysis by Montel, it wasted 10 terawatt hours of clean energy in 2025 – a 22% increase on 2024 figures and more than enough to power all Scottish domestic electricity demand for a year. With a lack of storage capacity for excess power, turning off wind farms also added over £1 billion to the nation’s energy bills.
So, how can we put energy generated to good use and prevent consumers from footing the bill?
Grid upgrades are undoubtedly part of the solution, but the hard work of overhauling national energy networks can take years. There’s an important piece of the puzzle that can help to tackle this issue now: clean hydrogen.
Curbing curtailment with on-site clean hydrogen generation.
When excess power can’t be fed into the grid, having a reliable storage option can turn waste energy into stored value. Hydrogen has long been able to provide electricity storage when combined with a fuel cell, perhaps as back-up to a data centre or to supply back into the grid when needed.
But lifetime cost and reliability was always a problem for hydrogen. Traditional membrane-based electrolysers (which are needed to produce hydrogen) haven’t been efficient enough to make widespread roll-out cost-effective.
Clean Power Hydrogen (CPH2) membrane-free technology is different. Even as wind speeds and sun strength fluctuate, our on-site electrolysers can still capture the excess energy and use it to generate high-purity green hydrogen. This hydrogen can then be stored for long duration back-up power or resold to businesses who need it for critical operations, from fuelling construction fleets to making pharmaceuticals or semiconductor components.
Tackling clean energy curtailment with on-site hydrogen production will help to maximise renewable energy generation, cut costs for consumers, and prevent energy wastage in a time of increasing demand and cost. And now we’ve got the cutting-edge technology to make it possible.