Tag Archives: Energy storage

Breakthrough for clean energy storage: massive new battery farm coming to California this decade

This Compressed Air Grid ‘Battery’ Is an Energy Storage Game Changer

Pumped hydropower is great. This method might be even better.
Popular Mechanics, by Caroline Delbert, May 3, 2021
hydrostor storage facility
Hydrostor storage facility
  • World-record compressed air energy storage is coming to California this decade.
  • Using air reduces overhead and materials costs compared with hydrogen storage.
  • Compressed air is stored during surplus times and fed back during peak usage.

Two new compressed air storage plants will soon rival the world’s largest non-hydroelectric facilities and hold up to 10 gigawatt hours of energy. But what is advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES), exactly, and why is the method about to have a moment?

Compressed air is part of a growingly familiar kind of energy storage: grid-stabilizing batteries. Like Elon Musk’s battery farm in Australia and other energy overflow storage facilities, the goal of a compressed air facility is to take extra energy from times of surplus and feed it back into the grid during peak usage.

Here’s how the A-CAES technology works: Extra energy from the grid runs an air compressor, and the compressed air is stored in the plant. Later, when energy is needed, the compressed air then runs a power-generating turbine. The facility also stores heat from the air to help smooth the turbine process later on.

While the efficiency of similar systems has hovered around 40 to 50 percent, the new system from Hydrostor, a major global leader in building hydroelectric storage, reportedly reaches 60 percent, according to Quartz.

Hydostor will store compressed air in a reservoir that’s partly filled with water to balance out the pressure. The whole system will hold up to 12 hours of energy for the grids where the two plants are planned. (The first plant will be built in Rosamond, California, while the second location is to be determined.)

hydrostor energy storage facility
Hydrostor energy storage facility

Why branch out from hydrogen to compressed air? While hydro storage is a great part of the global energy scene, storing massive amounts of water requires a ton of infrastructure that Hydrostor says uses a lot of energy it’s ultimately trying to save. That makes intuitive sense if you think about the relative force of water compared with even heavily pressurized air.

New Atlas elaborates:

“Pumped hydro accounts for around 95 percent of the world’s grid energy storage and gigawatt-capacity plants have been in operation since the 1980s. The problem is that you need a specific type of location and a staggering amount of concrete to build a pumped hydro plant, which works against the goal of reaching net zero. Rotting vegetation trapped in dams also contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the biggest mega-batteries built so far are only in the 200 MW/MWh range, though installations bigger than 1 GW are planned.

Recharge reports that companies have built smaller existing CAES facilities over naturally occurring salt caverns. In contrast, Hydrostor will be digging new caverns to use for its larger facilities in California, just as engineers are constructing huge salt caves in Utah to store hydrogen.

The first of Hydrostor’s two plants is set to open in 2026, and the company says its system will last for about 50 years—making it a lot longer-lived than almost any energy storage of its kind. The near future of energy is likely made of a dozen different solutions that are all suited to different environments and situations, so adding compressed air to the portfolio simply makes sense.

Bank Advises Clients Against Fossil Fuel Investment

Reprint from Time Magazine

HSBC Advises Clients Against Fossil Fuel Investment

By Nick Cunningham / Oilprice.com, April 29, 2015
The HSBC logo on the facade of HSBC France headquarters in Paris on Feb. 9, 2015.
The HSBC logo on the facade of HSBC France headquarters in Paris on Feb. 9, 2015.

The bank wrote to its clients that fossil fuel companies will become “economically non-viable”

The fossil fuel divestment campaign is picking up steam.

Often dismissed as unwise by oil industry proponents and criticized as a distraction even by supporters of action on climate change, the divestment movement is no longer being ignored.

Look no further than CeraWeek, an annual get-together of North America’s fossil fuel elite. On April 22, amid discussion panels such as “Asia: Still the Promised Land for New Energy Investment?” or “Canada’s role in the rising North America energy powerhouse,” there was also a session dedicated to divestment and the implications for energy companies. The conversation analyzed how sustainable the business model is for fossil fuel companies as the world moves towards regulating carbon emissions.

The attention paid to the divestment at CeraWeek suggests that the growing publicity and success from the environmental movement’s ability to secure divestment commitments from universities, banks, pension funds, churches, and other wealth funds are starting to be perceived as a threat by the fossil fuel industry.

A few weeks earlier, The Guardian made a splash with its “Keep it in the Ground” campaign, a very firm declaration in support of divestment. The Guardian Media Group vowed to divest its £800 million fund as well.

The growing concern over carbon pollution raises the possibility of a regulatory or tax crackdown, both at the national and international level. Newsweek reported on April 21 that HSBC wrote in a private note to its clients that there is an increasing risk that fossil fuel companies will become “economically non-viable.” As a result, HSBC advised its clients to divest from fossil fuels because they may be too risky. If investors fail to get out of fossil fuels, the bank says, they “may one day be seen to be late movers, on ‘the wrong side of history.’” As the divestment campaign builds up steam, major oil and gas companies are starting to see the writing on the wall.

But there could be a way to adapt. The Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI) just published a “blueprint” for fossil fuel companies to adapt to a carbon-constrained world. The blueprint provides several recommendations. For example, oil companies should avoid high cost projects such as the struggling Kashagan field in Kazakhstan or expensive oil sands projects in Canada. High-cost projects put companies at risk when they are hit with unforeseen events, such as an oil price crash, a decline in demand, or a change in tax regimes. Instead, companies should invest in lower risk projects with higher rates of return, CTI says. CTI also insists that corporate governance within fossil fuel companies is critical – management needs a clear-eyed prognosis of how exposed their assets are to a potential scenario in which their oil and gas reserves are no longer wanted.

It is far from clear whether or not the oil majors will heed CTI’s advice on adapting their companies. In mid-April, 98 percent of BP’s shareholders voted in favor of an initiative that would force the company to disclose which of its assets would become “unburnable” in a low-carbon world. The results of that analysis will be much anticipated. ExxonMobil undertook a similar study, but summarily dismissed the likelihood that its assets would be affected in the future by climate action.

“Our analysis and those of independent agencies confirms our long-standing view that all viable energy sources will be essential to meet increasing demand growth that accompanies expanding economies and rising living standards,” William Colton, ExxonMobil’s vice president of corporate strategic planning, said in a March 2014 statement. In other words, investors have little to fear — ExxonMobil will be fine.

However, much has changed since then. The divestment movement has gathered quite a bit of momentum as protests hit more campuses and city halls. The U.S. and China reached a landmark agreement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. More countries will set policies to reduce energy demand ahead of international negotiations in Paris later this year. Oil prices have crashed, highlighting the vulnerabilities of many over-leveraged oil companies. And clean energy continues to make inroads, amid falling costs for solar, wind, and energy storage.

Oil companies ignore the divestment campaign – and other threats to their business models – at their own peril.

This article originally appeared on Oilprice.com.