According to Highview Power, the first grid-scale liquid air energy-storage (LAES) plant has officially launched. The 5-MW/15-MWh LAES plant, located near Manchester, U.K., will be able to store and deliver enough electricity to power about 5,000 average-sized homes for around three hours, as well as offer a number of reserve, grid-balancing, and regulation services. Check out the video on the plant’s launch:
“The global energy storage market will grow to a cumulative 125 GW/305 GWh by 2030, attracting $103 billion in investment over this period,” says Logan Goldie-Scot, head of energy storage analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “Utility-scale storage becomes a practical alternative to new-build generation or network reinforcement, especially for underutilized assets in some markets. We expect energy storage to increasingly be used for longer durations over this period, providing such services as peaking capacity and renewable-energy integration.”
With LAES technology now being proven at grid scale, the plant paves the way for wider adoption of LAES technology globally. True long-duration energy storage is critical to enable the broader deployment of renewable energy; overcome the intermittency of solar and wind energy; and help smooth peaks and troughs in demand. LAES can easily and cost-effectively scale up to hundreds of megawatts, and could easily store enough electricity to power a town of around 100,000 homes over a period of many days.
Highview Power’s patented technology draws on established processes from the turbo-machinery, power-generation, and industrial gas sectors. LAES uses components and subsystems that are mature technologies available from major OEMs. The technology draws heavily on established processes from the power-generation and industrial gas sectors, with known costs, performance, and life cycles all ensuring a low technology risk.
How Does LAES Work?
LAES, also referred to as cryogenic energy storage (CES), is a long-duration, large-scale energy-storage technology that can be located at the point of demand. LAES plants can provide the long-duration energy storage. The working fluid is liquefied air or liquid nitrogen (~78% of air). Size extends from around 5 MW to hundreds of megawatts, and with capacity and energy being decoupled, the systems are well-suited to long-duration applications.
The basic principle for LAES is that air turns to liquid when cooled down to −196°C (−320˚F), so it can then be stored very efficiently in insulated, low-pressure vessels. When it’s cheaper (usually at night), electricity is used to cool air from the atmosphere to −196°C using the Claude Cycle to the point where it liquefies. The liquid air, which takes up one-thousandth of the volume of the gas, can be kept for a long time in a large vacuum flask at atmospheric pressure.
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