UK energy storage technology development company Highview Power Storage has won both the Power Generation and Transmission Award and the Group Energy Environmental Award at the recent Rushlight Awards.
Highview Power Storage has developed and built a pilot plant of an energy storage system which uses liquid air to stop wrong time energy. Critically, the system can be scaled to 100MWs/GWhs of storage, similar to medium scale pumped hydro, but without the requirement for mountains.
As Toby Peters, co-founder of Highview and COO, explained, “If you want a low carbon grid, what you want to do is manage your resources the best you can, which is what energy storage allows you to do. The grid will need a lot more reserves and balancing solutions as more wind and renewables are deployed, and energy storage is one route where you capture ‘wrong time energy’ and shift it to the right time.
“Whereas many companies were focusing on fast response but relatively small scale battery technologies, we started out five years ago to develop a system which could deliver affordable, long duration, large scale energy storage without geographical constraints.”
Dr Tim Fox, head of energy at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, where the technology was showcased, said, “Liquid Air Energy Storage is a very promising technology, using our most abundant resource to solve one of the renewable energy industry’s most pressing challenges.
“This is also a great example of 21st Century British engineering. The energy storage market could be worth over $100bn over the next decade and create over 100,000 jobs. These are jobs which the UK sorely needs.”
