Cryogenic Storage | Manchester UK
Work has begun on a £300m energy plant which will store surplus electricity from wind and solar farms in the form of liquid air.
The CryoBattery works by using electricity to cool and compress air, turning it into liquid and storing it in industrial sized containers. It then feeds the liquid through a turbine, turning it back into electricity and pumping it back into the grid when it is needed.
I’ve been sharing progress with you over years and it’s promising to see tangible progress.
Energy compressed into air, liquified and then cryogenically frozen can be held at the plant for several weeks, which is longer than battery storage.
The investment will enable the construction of one of the world’s largest long duration energy storage (LDES) facilities in Carrington, Manchester, using Highview Power’s proprietary LAES technology.
Once complete, it will have a storage capacity of 300 MWh and an output power of 50 MWs per hour for six hours.
The facility at Carrington near Manchester, designed by Highview Power, will create more than 700 jobs in the north-west of England
Highview believes its programme sets the bar for storage energy systems around the world, raising Britain to global leadership in energy storage and managing grid flexibility.
Highview Power is planning four even bigger LAES plants elsewhere in Britain. The 2.5 GWh facilities, funded with an anticipated future £3 billion, will ensure a fast roll-out of the technology to align with the nation’s LDES (long duration energy storage) goals enabling the ESO’s Future Energy Scenario plans.
The technology can store renewable electricity for as much as several weeks, longer than electro-chemical batteries. The company says it is ready to be rolled out at scale, at key grid chokepoints.
Stability services to the National Grid including system balancing, feature among Highview’s business offers, speeding the redundancy of despatchable fossil fuelled power to manage demand volatility. It’s not a hydrogen technology but is in the same space the Dutch hydrogen – battery, the splendidly monikered Battolyser;
The technology can make more manageable storage curbs curtailment costs, too. Last year British bill payers were caught on a £800 million hook, as stilled wind farms claimed compensation simply because the NG was too full to accept their low carbon output.
Proprietary cryogenic energy storage technology utilizes air liquefaction, in which ambient air is cooled and turned to liquid at -196 °C (-320 ˚F). The liquid air is stored at low pressure and later heated and expanded to drive a turbine and generate power. It is the only long duration energy storage solution available today that is locatable and can offer multiple gigawatt-hours (weeks) of storage.
CRYOBattery™ has a small footprint, and is scalable with no size limitations or geographic constraints, allowing for the deployment of massive amounts of renewables. Cryogenic energy storage plants offer valuable capabilities including voltage control, grid balancing and synchronous inertia, giving grid operators the flexibility to manage power and energy services independently:
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