Liquid Air: Highview Power Debuts Plan to Build ‘Europe’s Largest Energy Storage System’
2GreenEnergy super-supporter Gary Tulie writes from his home in Buckinghamshire, England (pictured):
Hi Craig, This could be one more technology on the path to powering the world mostly using wind and solar. Whilst this is the biggest energy storage system of its type in Europe, there are a number of larger pumped storage systems in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
Here’s the email I sent back:
Hi, Gary. Thanks very much. This is terrific. I wonder how efficient it is, and how the capex and opex compare to other forms of storage. I think I’ll make a blog post out of this, and wait for Glenn Doty to come along.
I’m guessing this is pretty good, because it involves phase change, unlike compressed air or molten salt, or, obviously, pumped hydro.
I became aware of the power of phase change when my eldest nephew gave me six ping-pong sized rocks as a Christmas gift, to be stored in the freezer, then used to chill my evening martini. The result: a martini that weighs about three pounds and is barely cool. All I was doing was transferring some of the the heat in the gin to warm the rocks. Conversely, the melting of a far smaller amount of ice does the job nicely, as it uses the latent heat of fusion that it extracts from the gin.
Thanks again.
Hi Gary,
Than you for your post.
IMHO, when evaluating energy storage systems, Cryogenic energy storage must be considered along with pumped energy and gravity.
Highview Power is one of the leading firms developing Cryogenic energy storage facilities. Following the success of pilot projects in Slough and Manchester the company will build a full size project in a undisclosed location in the Midland donated by the government.
Highveiw claims the new plant will store energy for weeks, rather than hours or days, as is the case with current battery technologies.
Highview expects projected costs of approximately £110/MWh for a 10-hour, 200MW/2GWh system. The plant’s cryobattery technology being able to deliver estimates from 20MW/80MWh to more than 200MW/1.2GWh.
The life time of the plant is claimed to be 30 years.
Cryogenic energy storage is only economically viable in the context of assisting the grid to cope with surplus capacity produced by intermittent renewable generation such as Wind farms etc.
Cryogenic energy storage has several rivals, such as Elon Musk’s lithium ion “mega battery” installations, Redox flow batteries, pumped storage and many other more exotic solutions. Most alternate storage systems have advantages over CES, but all have limitations (geography, cost, etc).
In my opinion, all energy storage facilities share a common defect. All storage systems strive to engineer solutions to enable round pegs fit in square holes.
The problem the engineers try to solve, with ever more complex technology, is not in the engineering, but in the brief they have been provided.
Trying to make and inherently inefficient and intermittent power source economically viable in a society which wants “power on demand” not “power when available’, will eventually prove futile.
The justification for this technology began with the concept that fossil fuels were in danger of imminent shortage and ever rising cost. The fear of “peak oil” type depletion, and the dangers of Uranium as nuclear fuel became foremost in the minds of planners.
As the prospect of “peak oil” disappeared, the impetus for ‘renewable energy’ was replaced by the need to reduce “climate Change” emissions.
However, so mostly political/ideological reasons, the Western world has become obsessed, not with simply removing or mitigating environmentally harmful emissions, but proving renewable energy is not only feasible, but economically viable.
Renewable energy lobbyists continue to urge ignoring the massive developments in cheap and effective carbon capture and carbon recycling technology.
Instead these advocates demand ever more complicated methods to conceal the simple fact that most industrial scale renewable is not only inadequate, but hopelessly uneconomic.
Thorium nuclear power technology, is not only safer and more environmental, but cheaper and easier. We are not pursuing this technology on purely political grounds due to the fanaticism of the Green/left lobby.
The problem, as I see it, is the Western world’s commitment to an ideological acceptance of ‘renewable’ technology, as a result the “renewable’ industry has grown so large and politically powerful we have all lost perspective and objectivity.
The danger is by focusing all our efforts on proving renewable technology can work, we are not choosing the most competitive, efficient and environmentally beneficial technology.
This will leave the Western world at a huge trade disadvantage as we become less and less competitive.