Jesper Berggreen, Clean Technica
Summary
Test Facility in Denmark to Be Proof of Concept For High Temperature Thermal Energy Storage Using Stones as Storage
On Monday, the Danish minister of education and research, Tommy Ahlers, attended the official inauguration of a giant pilot facility that will use 600 degree hot stones to store energy. Speaking to dr.dk, he said: “This could be the missing link in our renewable energy transformation.” (It’s arguable whether there really is a missing link, but that’s another story.) High-temperature thermal energy storage (HT-TES) is the technical term. The basic concept of the project is that cheap, non-degradable, and environmentally friendly storage materials combined with known charging and discharging technology can reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of energy storage.
Imagine a big box of small black stones, the size of an IKEA warehouse, insulated on all sides, very big, but very easy to build. The idea is that when excess energy is produced by intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar, this energy is used to pump very hot air into the stone storage, where the energy in the form of heat can be stored for many days with very little loss on average. The process is reversed by forcing the hot air out of the storage, which in turn creates steam from water to drive electricity-generating turbines and produce hot water for district heating.
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#News#ThermalEnergyStorage#DistrictHeating#Denmark