China starts operating its first large scale salt cavern hydrogen storage project
China Coal Pingmei Shenma Group started operating what state media calls the country first salt cavern hydrogen storage project built at the million cubic meter scale, in Ye County, part of Pingdingshan, in Henan Province, in central China, on April 25, 2026. Salt cavern hydrogen storage means holding hydrogen gas deep underground inside a cave dissolved out of a natural salt deposit, instead of in tanks above ground. The plant, run through a subsidiary called Henan Pingmei Storage and Salt Chemical, can hold 1.5 million standard cubic meters of hydrogen, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences Wuhan Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, the lead technical partner.
Why storing hydrogen underground matters
Wind and solar farms often make more electricity than the grid needs at that moment, and hydrogen made from that surplus power needs somewhere cheap to sit until needed later. A salt cavern can hold far more gas than a surface tank at a lower cost per unit stored, which is why pv magazine, an independent trade publication, frames the project as a way to smooth out the mismatch between when wind and solar power are generated and when the grid or the hydrogen made from it is actually needed. The cavern itself was dissolved out of an underground salt deposit to a volume of more than 30,000 cubic meters. Reaching it meant drilling a well to a final depth of 1,418 meters, as built, through more than 1,000 meters of rock before reaching the top of the salt layer. Building a well this deep raised a specific problem, hydrogen embrittlement, a form of metal damage hydrogen gas can cause in steel over time. The steelmaker Baosteel says it delivered casing pipe built to resist it, lining the well.
The depth to the top of the salt layer comes from source 4. The final drilled depth comes from source 2, the as built figure reported at launch, not the earlier 1,480 meter figure planned before construction, which this article does not use.
Show the numbers
| Well depth | 1,030 to 1,418 meters below the surface |
A 17 month build from groundbreaking to startup
Construction began November 16, 2024, and the site started running April 25, 2026, about 17 months later, a MAOWCE calculation from those 2 dates. In between, the cavern and its surface pipeline were finished by around April 2025, hydrogen injection and brine extraction were finished by around June 2025, and a pilot run finished by around September 2025. Building the well and site cost 77.72 million yuan, according to the trade outlet that covered the groundbreaking.
These elapsed months are a MAOWCE calculation from 2 sourced dates, the groundbreaking date and the first 3 milestone months from source 4, the April 2026 startup date from source 1, not a number either source states directly.
Show the numbers
| Salt cavity and surface pipeline complete | 5 |
| Hydrogen injection and brine extraction complete | 7 |
| Pilot phase complete | 10 |
| Plant starts operating | 17 |
A domestic supply chain and the gap it closes
China National Petroleum Corporation and Sinopec also took part in the project. Every piece of core equipment running the plant is made inside China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences reports, a claim pv magazine independent coverage also carries. The academy own account of the project, published on its own website, frames the launch as the point where the country hydrogen industry chain moves beyond making and using hydrogen and into storing and moving it as well, a framing that only surfaces from reading that account directly rather than the shorter launch writeups. Academician Yang Chunhe of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who led the project technical work, said at the launch, in remarks Xinhua recorded and this article translates from the original Chinese, that the project closes a gap in the country large scale salt cavern hydrogen storage technology and marks the field first working example at this scale.