Australian city of Broken Hill to adopt compressed air energy storage technology

　　Although in the past ten years, lithium battery energy storage, especially lithium iron phosphate battery, which can perfectly replace lead-acid batteries, has gradually gained more and more in the energy storage category because of its advantages of long life, high safety performance, environmental protection, and low price. more important position. However, there is still a huge market demand for other energy storage methods, because many scenarios are not suitable for using lithium battery energy storage. Although SES Power mainly focuses on lithium battery energy storage products, it has nearly two decades of experience, such as We use 12V100Ah, 12V200Ah, 48V100Ah, and even 120V300Ah energy storage systems made of square aluminum-shell lithium iron phosphate cells from famous cell manufacturers such as CATL and EVE. We still care about the application of other types of energy storage methods.

　　Australian transmission network operator Transgrid has selected "advanced compressed air energy storage technology" developed by Hydrostor as the preferred option for creating a backup energy supply, and will be installed in Broken Hill, NSW, according to reports.) to deploy.

　　Transgrid has previously evaluated various energy storage project proposals for deployment in the city of Broken Hill, and the winning proposal will provide the highest net benefit locally and improve the ability to integrate renewable energy into its grid.

　　(Rendering of Hydrostor's Silver City compressed air project)

　　Canadian energy storage developer Hydrostor, which has proprietary Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) technology, said Transgrid has included its proposed 200MW/1,500MWh SilverCity energy storage centre in a new project evaluation report. The project is identified as the most suitable energy storage project.

　　Marie Jordan, executive general manager of Transgrid's network, said that Hydrostor's energy storage project is the preferred long-term energy storage solution for high-voltage transmission network operators and is in the long-term interest of electricity customers. The Long Duration Energy Storage System (LDES) will be able to export stored electricity to the grid to participate in Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) and help the region's grid free up more capacity to accommodate more renewable electricity.

　　Jordan said. "As we continue our transition to renewable energy, we must prioritize the adoption of clean energy solutions that will effectively support the nation's decarbonization goals and its leadership in renewable technologies."

　　The city of Broken Hill is a historic mining area in western New South Wales. More recently, it has been home to a number of utility-scale solar and wind facilities, and the city is currently deploying a 50MW battery storage system.

　　In an interview with industry media earlier this year, Hydrostor CEO Curtis Van Walleghem said that the city of Broken Hill mainly uses diesel generators to provide electricity. These generators have been used for up to 40 years and are about to enter the period of mass scrapping.

　　Transgrid didn't want to replace these diesel generators with more fossil fuels, so it worked hard to find clean energy. Hydrostor's Silver City energy storage project has been awarded a transmission reliability contract from the power system operator, and the storage developer hopes to stack this revenue stream with funding from Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), in partnership with local government and Energy traders reach a deal.

　　Hydrostor's Walleghem said he believed the project could be completed and operational by 2025 or earlier.

　　(Hydrostor's energy storage project stores compressed air in underground hard rock caves)

　　While Hydrostor has only one commercial operation so far, a 2.2MW compressed air energy storage project in Ontario, Canada, lasting about five hours, the company is developing in California and Brock Hill, Australia Large-scale long-term energy storage projects, totaling 1.1GW/8.7GWh.

　　Walleghem said the company could provide the technology to customers or, like BrokenHill and its two energy storage projects in California, identify development opportunities for projects and enter the development process itself.

　　The Hydrostor technology is known as the "Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage System" (A-CAES) because it provides some significant improvements to the compressed air energy storage technology that has been operating for several years at two compressed air energy storage projects in the United States and Germany, with a total installed capacity of 400MW.

　　The main point is that, unlike traditional compressed air technology, advanced compressed air energy storage systems do not require the use of electricity from fossil fuel power plants to preheat the air for expansion. Instead, it uses what Walleghem says is a very simple and reliable thermal management system that stores the heat generated when the air is compressed by heating water, and then uses the hot water in a subsequent air expansion step. Compared with other compressed air solutions, its efficiency is increased by about 25%: its round-trip efficiency has increased from about 40% to about 65%.

　　The company also claims that, unlike pumped hydro storage (PHES) power generation facilities, advanced compressed air energy storage systems are relatively easy to sit and build, require far less space and water, and geoengineering is largely limited to underground cavernous tunnels.

　　Hydrostor has secured a $250 million investment commitment announced by Goldman Sachs Asset Management in January, as well as a $25 million investment from the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP).

　　SES Power hopes that more and more energy storage technologies will contribute to reducing carbon emissions in the future.