Recent years have witnessed the development and commercialization of power-to-gas(PtG)technology

which has made possible the interconnection within a combined multi-energy system. However

innovative as PtG is in terms of consumption

storage and transportation

its popularization is way ahead. This is because of the technical bottleneck of installed capacity

limited availability

high capital cost and mediocre energy conversion efficiency of current PtG techniques. Given this background

the possible application of PtG technology in multi-energy systems abroad is discussed

and the cost and benefit of PtG plants are analyzed for several specified operation scenarios. Through numerical simulations with real world data for several simplified and ideal test scenarios

it is concluded that the current PtG technological development level is generally economically inefficient based on the present levels of transforming efficiency

cost and capacity. In certain cases

however

the PtG plants may make profits and contribute to efficient operation of the multi-energy systems through reasonable operation strategies. As the capital and operation cost of PtG plants are believed to decrease significantly in the forthcoming years

the PtG technology will be able to demonstrate its economic feasibility through cooperation with natural gas fired power plants

and participation in ancillary service provision. This work is supported by National Basic Research Program of China(973 Program)(No. 2013CB228202)

National Natural Science Foundation of China(No. 51477151)and China Southern Power Grid Company Limited(No. WYKJ00000027).