Adiabatic CAES, 62-70% efficient, 20MW to multi-GW size, 4+ hours duration. The world’s cleanest, most cost-effective transmission grid-scale electricity storage, suitable globally

About

Storelectric is developing truly grid-scale energy storage with TES CAES, an innovative adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) using Thermal Energy Storage, the world’s most efficient CAES. A novel configuration of existing, off-the-shelf technologies to create electricity storage plants sized from 20MW to multi-GW, with durations of 4 hours to multi-days, the most cost-effective and widely replicable zero-emissions technology at this scale with strong double-digit IRR in today's market, un-subsidised. Needs/benefits: required to enable renewables to power the grid and country. Renewables are mostly intermittent (generate when they want); we turn the energy into baseload and dispatchable (available when needed), at truly grid scales. Validation: a 40MW plant has been analysed and validated by Costain, Fortum, Arup, Siemens, Oswald Consultancy and others; building on this a 500MW plant has been validated by Mott MacDonald. Reports, results and letters of support available. Synergies with the oil and gas industry: uses technologies and locations widely used in the industry; projects at comparable sizes; potential big enough to impact your corporate balance sheet beneficially and future-proof your business within the energy industry. Recognition: These plants are accepted as a European Project of Common Interest, i.e. important at a continental scale. Support from National Grid, the DNO, local authorities, numerous awards etc. Projects: Salt caverns (for air storage) have been offered to us, together with land and planning support, in Cheshire; in discussion with others. Both local and national planning authorities see no show-stoppers following wildlife surveys and informal review of the outline proposals. Interest expressed for other plants in UK, France, Netherlands, Middle East and elsewhere. Roll-out: global, including most EU countries. Potential to store enough energy to power Europe for a fortnight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb7TaoUx8dc (1 minute: note the Siemens and PwC contributions.)

Key Benefits

• Enables renewables to power the grid without subsidies, almost globally. • Totally clean technology. • Transforms intermittent generation into dispatchable and baseload supply, at grid scale. • Profitable in increasing numbers of today’s markets in many countries, becoming more so. • Additional synergies with major renewable generators and interconnectors. • Leading in the development of a new global industry. • Global need, market and growth potential.

Applications

• Balancing de-carbonising electricity grids at lower whole-system cost. • Providing energy security at regional and national scale. • Making grid-scale (>20MW) renewable generation profitable without subsidy. • Enhancing profitability and utilisation of interconnectors. • Supporting the decarbonisation of other industries (heating, transportation, industry etc.). • Currently suited to globally-distributed salt basins; in future will also use other geologies which have been identified and which we will develop.

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