A novel ‘no water’ hydropower system that it is claimed can upend the energy storage sector by turning even low-lying hills into green power stores is to get its first full-scale trial run.
UK start-up RheEnergise has agreed to build a “first-of-its-kind” demonstrator project for its system at a mine in Cornwall, in England’s southwest.
RheEnergise plans to have the demonstrator, which will help decarbonise the mining operations, ready for September.
The UK government’s Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration Programme is supporting the project, said RheEnergise.
The demonstrator is a “trailblazing project” for the long duration energy storage sector and will place RheEnergise in a strong position to build commercial-scale projects in this country and overseas,” said the start-up’s CEO Stephen Crosher.
“We have global interest in our technology, from as far as Australia and Chile. We would like to have our first 10MW grid-scale project in operation within 2 years.”
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RheEnergise has developed what it says is a High-Density (HD) Hydro energy storage system, which can harness excess power from wind and solar facilities.
At times of low energy demand, the HD Hydro system pumps a patented fluid two and a half times denser than water uphill to underground storage tanks larger than an Olympic-size swimming pool.
When energy demand and prices rise, the fluid is released downhill and passes through turbines, generating electricity to supply power to the grid.
Projects will range from 5MW to 100MW of power and can work with vertical elevations of 100 metres or less.
This means the system can be used on hills, rather than the steeper, mountainous terrain needed by traditional hydropower systems, which are subsequently limited to very specific geographies.
That is said to unlock thousands of potential sites in the UK, where mountains are in short supply in much of the country, and over 100,000 sites across Europe, Africa, North America and Australia, where RheEnergise has conducted geographical analysis.
RheEnergise says mines and quarries could use its system as these have high elevations and need lots of power.
HD Hydro systems can be built in just a few years, it says, compared to the average five to 10 year time it takes to build a traditional hydropower facility.
RheEnergise also boasts its facilities would have a dramatically smaller footprint than traditional pumped-storage hydroelectric facilities, which require the flooding of valleys, meaning that they could get planning consent in months rather than years.