Energy Storage

Reactive Technologies uses an ultracapacitor to send signals to the grid that help managers determine the level of system inertia, supporting power grid stability – and they’re coming to the United States.

Elsewhere, Lotte Chemical and Air Liquid Korea will establish a joint venture to build a hydrogen supply chain in South Korea and the US Department’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) offered a conditional commitment for a US$504.4M loan guarantee to the Advanced Clean Energy Storage Project in Utah, which combines alkaline electrolysis with salt cavern storage for grid scale energy conversion and storage using hydrogen as the energy carrier.

In other news, BYD’s quarterly profit is up by 241% buoyed by demand for battery-powered cars, Ford takes a US$3.1 billion loss on its Rivian stake and cuts 580 jobs as part of corporate restructuring, and ABB agrees to provide its full portfolio of EV charging technology to Shell.

German startup Nexol has developed a photovoltaic water heating system that relies on a smart controller, with either DC and AC power. It decides autonomously if grid electricity or PV is used, with the latter always preferred.

Switzerland’s Energy Vault will support Indian state-run power producer NTPC by deploying its gravity-based energy storage technology and software solutions.

Researchers at the University of Genoa have conducted a techno-economic analysis to assess green hydrogen produced via water electrolysis and its conversion into three alternative fuels – methane, methanol, and ammonia. They looked into efficiency, storage capacity, annual costs, and production costs of the different fuels, which they found to be significantly higher than market reference values.

A UK consortium has developed the Prisma system, which stores thermal energy in liquid air form to provide onsite compressed air, via a latent energy cold storage tank filled with a phase-change material. It is expected to have a levelized cost of storage of GBP 114 ($143.10)/MWh.

The number of solar installers in Australia offering storage solutions grew considerably in 2021 and promises to surge again this year, according to a survey by EUPD Research.

The Canadian provincial government’s Green Economy Plan, launched in November 2020, envisages a 37.5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions en route to net zero by mid century.

The device is described as a heat engine with no moving parts that is able to produce power from a heat source of between 1,900 to 2,400 C. This concept is known as thermal energy grid storage (TEGS) and consists of a low-cost, grid-scale storage technology that uses thermophotovoltaic cells to convert heat to electricity above 2,000 C.