Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) and Magnum Development today joined The Honorable Gary Herbert, Governor of Utah, to announce an initiative to launch the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) project in central Utah. In the world’s largest project of its kind, the ACES initiative will develop 1,000 megawatts of 100 percent clean energy storage, thereby deploying technologies and strategies essential to a decarbonized future for the power grid of the Western United States.
According to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector have dropped 30 percent since 2005 (www.emissionsindex.org), because of a combination of natural gas and renewable power replacing retiring coal-fired power plants. MHPS has been instrumental in this transition and last year became the global market share leader for heavy duty gas turbines. As a next step in decarbonization, MHPS has developed gas turbine technology that enables a mixture of renewable hydrogen and natural gas to produce power with even lower carbon emissions. The MHPS technology roadmap aims to use 100 percent renewable hydrogen as a fuel source, which will allow gas turbines to produce electricity with zero carbon emissions.
Magnum Development owns and controls the only known “Gulf Coast” style domal-quality salt formation in the western United States. With five salt caverns already in operation for liquid fuels storage, Magnum is continuing to develop Compressed Air Energy Storage and renewable hydrogen storage options. Strategically located adjacent to the Intermountain Power Project, the Magnum site is positioned to integrate seamlessly with the western U.S. power grid utilizing existing infrastructure.
In many parts of the western United States, there are times of day when demand for electricity is lower than the production of renewable power. This leads to curtailment of renewable generation and negative electricity pricing. Continued deployment of renewables will require that excess power be stored for later use. To serve the needs of the entire western United States, many gigawatt-hours of storage capacity are required.
Initially developing enough energy storage to completely serve the needs of 150,000 households for an entire year, the ACES initiative will deploy four types of clean energy storage at utility scale. These energy storage technologies include:
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