A service procured by transmission and distribution system operators to help re-energise an electricity network or grid following a widespread uncontrolled shutdown of the system. This usually involves the need to provide power for a period of at least 8 hours. A recent example of such an event was the August 2003 shutdown of the North East of the United States.
Describes whether active cooling or other energy consuming/efficiency reducing management processes are required during operation to keep the relevant storage device safe.
Round trip efficiency, sometimes RTE- the amount of energy discharged as a ratio of the amount used to charge a storage system including any parasitic loads required to operate the system (e.g. cooling loads or other balance of plant activity).
The ability to add more storage capacity to a system, best represented by the marginal cost of incremental storage capacity of a storage system.
Describes the extent to which the choice of location for a plant of that technology is dictated by geography, geology or safety considerations.
The extent to which a storage technology can provide an on-site support service to a renewable generation facility which avoids the need for the renewable energy plant to be shut down due to network or connection constraints (e.g. too much wind which the network cannot absorb).
The speed in seconds at which each technology can respond to a signal to deliver power or add load to the grid or provide any other service (e.g. reactive power).
The level of impact upon the environment.
LAES | Liquid Air Energy Storage |
---|---|
EPC | Engineering, Procurement & Construction – a contracting arrangement. |
OEM | Original Equipment Manufacturer |
MAC | Main Air Compressor |
RAC | Recycling Air Compressor |
PRU | Power Recovery Unit |
CAES | Compressed Air Energy Storage |
PHS | Pumped Hydro Storage |
LNG | Liquefied Natural Gas |
STOR | Short Term Operating Reserve |
FEED | Front End Engineering & Design |
Due to growing demand, changing consumption and increasing intermittency due to renewable generation on the electricity network, we need energy storage to help balance the grid and store energy for times of peak demand.
Most renewable sources are intermittent so cannot be relied on alone to provide continuous power. This is usually overcome by having a mixed portfolio of generation sources which include some non-intermittent fossil or nuclear sources and more frequently nowadays, storage. However, it’s possible that future energy generation will include a mixture of nuclear combined with renewables backed up by energy storage.
We are referring to energy storage systems with durations upwards of 4 hours up to days at a time. Long duration is required for applications related to security of supply (e.g. Capacity Markets, Black Start, network investment deferral) and renewable curtailment reduction, and when the revenue stack includes at least one of these applications.
Long duration storage provides greater resilience for gaps in renewables production, so provides for a greater penetration of intermittent renewable power. In addition, long duration storage provides more reserve power to cover for unexpected events on the system (e.g. failures in other power plants) and so contributes to maintaining energy independence whilst supporting increased sustainability of the grid.
A long duration storage technology needs to be low cost, long lived, freely locatable, flexible and environmentally friendly. Cryogenic energy storage fulfils all of these characteristics.
Highview Power undertakes techno-economic feasibility studies for clients, engineering services including preliminary design, Front End Engineering and Design, and in many cases detailed design work. The preferred delivery vehicle for a project is to work with a large delivery partner, EPC and/or OEM to support the successful delivery of a cryogenic energy storage plant. The technology is ultimately licenced to the delivery vehicle and the associated consortium, in which Highview may or may not remain a participant.
Similarly to thermal power plants, a cryogenic energy storage plants construction would be managed by an EPC contractor unless the client has the resources internally to manage the project.
Highview Power has long-standing relationships with all global large machinery manufacturers, including licence agreements and collaboration agreements with large blue-chip organisations. We have several framework agreements in place with large multi-national EPC organisations to facilitate the roll-out and long-term support infrastructure for the technology.
Since the company was founded in 2005, Highview Power has benefitted from ~£12m of government funding, mostly through funding competitions run by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), formerly the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and by Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. Highview Power has also run a successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the University of Brighton; the KTP associate has since been employed by Highview Power and is now firmly embedded in the Engineering team.
The concept of using liquid air as an energy storage medium was published in academic papers in the 1970s.
Cryogenic energy storage meets all the necessary criteria for long duration storage; it is low cost, has a long lifetime, an existing supply chain, is compact in size, is freely locatable, flexible and is environmentally friendly.
Cryogenic energy storage is better suited for systems upwards of 10MW.
The requirement for long duration energy storage is a growing need. Prior to Highview’s work nobody to date has been able to develop a large enough system, for a high enough efficiency and sufficiently low cost to make it viable that is locatable at the point of need on the grid.
A 200 MW Highview Power system with energy capacity of 4.8 GWh could serve 200,000 homes of average demand for a whole day.
The modern energy system needs to be sustainable, secure and low cost. Locatable long duration energy storage is the missing link to solving this problem.
Highview Power is the market leader in cryogenic energy storage. We built the world’s first fully integrated cryogenic energy storage pilot plant, which operated from 2011- 2014, the world’s first grid scale facility commissioned in 2018, and have developed class-leading supply chain partnerships to design, build, operate and maintain our cryogenic energy storage product.
Highview Power owns a range of patents covering its proprietary cryogenic energy storage technology at system, sub-system and component level. This includes protection of the integration of cryogenic energy storage with other thermal processes and process improvements relating both to the practical challenges associated with developing the technology and enhancing the system to meet the demands of different markets.
Highview Power’s growing patent portfolio extends to some 15 patent families, and over 35 granted patents globally.
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