Funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme for climate innovation, the 2LiPP (2nd Life for Power Plants) project is aiming to demonstrate a scalable hybrid storage system designed to support combined heat and power (CHP) plants in their transition from fossil-based operations to key providers of grid stability and security of supply in a renewable grid.
The 2LiPP project will demonstrate how a combination of three energy storage technologies with different storage capacities and dispatch capabilities can be operated in parallel to provide a wide range of grid services. The three energy storage technologies are:
- molten salt storage, provided by Hyme;
- flywheel, provided by QuinteQ Energy; and
- recycled lithium-ion batteries, provided by PLS Energy Systems.
A new type of energy management system is being developed by Pini Solutions to operate and dispatch the storage systems optimally.
The 10-15 MWh demonstration molten salt storage plant being developed by Hyme will partially replace the boiler of a CHP plant on the island of Bornholm, Denmark . The storage plant will be installed within the existing power plant and integrated into its operations.
Hyme, a spin-off from Danish nuclear power technology developer Seaborg Technologies, is planning to deploy a novel molten salt thermal energy storage system using sodium hydroxide as the storage medium.
Netherlands based QuinteQ describes its offering as “the world’s most advanced flywheel energy storage solution,” which “leverages high-speed rotations, rather than mass,” with core elements of the flywheel technology originating from Boeing R&D.
The QuinteQ flywheel employs an ultra-fast (22 500 rpm) lightweight carbon fibre rotor that is described as “100% magnetically levitated”, using superconducting magnet technology.
…and Richborough
A 100 MW/100 MWh battery storage facility developed by Pacific Green, and owned by the Sosteneo Energy Transition Fund – a fund managed by Milan based investment manager Sosteneo Infrastructure Partners – is now operational at Richborough Energy Park in Kent, UK, and connected via National Grid’s 400 kV Richborough substation.
The Richborough site occupies land where a coal power station generated electricity from the early sixties through to 1996, and stood until its demolition in 2012.
The former coal fired power station, with its hyperboloid cooling towers, played an important role in powering the United Kingdom’s early supergrid.
Richborough was also host to an experimental 1 MW wind turbine in the late eighties, which, at the time, was the UK’s largest.
National Grid started redeveloping the site following the demolition of the coal plant, building the converter station for the 1 GW Nemo Link interconnector with Belgium. This is located where the plant’s cooling towers once stood. The Thanet offshore wind farm – the world’s biggest at the time of its launch – also connects into an adjacent substation on the wider Richborough Energy Park site.
The new battery facility is managed by Pacific Green under a long term asset management agreement, and was Sosteneo’s first acquisition in the UK.
