UK Group Plans First Large-Scale Liquid Air Energy Storage Plant
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the FT.
This is the first paragraph.
Highview Power is attempting to raise £400mn to fund project with capacity to supply 600,000 homes.
Note.
- This battery will have an output of 30 MW and a storage capacity of 300 MWh.
- The battery will be built at Carrington, near Manchester.
- Highview Power hope it will be opened by the end of 2024.
- It appears that the £400 million will also be used to start the engineering for another four batteries.
The article gives a detailed history of the company.
The Anonymous Widower 
Hm, they’ve been talking about this for some time now. According to their website, the Carrington plant is ‘underway’, but now they’re saying they haven’t even got the finance yet?
Comment by Peter Robins | November 15, 2022 |
I have heard very good reports of Rupert Pearce from a couple of trusted sources.
Judging by the amateurish web site, I suspect he found a rather chaotic company and only now has he started to get the act together. Carlton certainly seem to be a professional bunch.
Comment by AnonW | November 15, 2022 |
disappointing though. Last year they were saying it would be operational this year – and now in 2 years time. Perhaps it would be better if they were taken over by one of the large oil/gas/chemical companies, who would have the finance, engineering and management skills to develop the tech at a large scale.
Comment by Peter Robins | November 15, 2022
You don’t get any bigger than Sumitomo and they must own a noticeable share.
Comment by AnonW | November 15, 2022
Whatever happened to the projects Highview were promoting only a couple of months ago that ….”will be built at a breakneck speed of two to three a year during the 2020s, with a target of 20 sites able to provide almost 6GW of back-up electricity”.
Pearce has had his new management team in place since July/August so they’ve no excuses to still be putting out such a confusing rhetoric.
Remember that Pearce was selected “on the rebound” following the withdrawal of the headhunted new CEO who was selected to start at the beginning of this year having flirted with Columbia Capital a venture capital fund.
I’m beginning to wonder whether Pearce is in reality more focussed on other things .
Comment by fammorris | November 15, 2022 |
However, I have no worries about the technology, as many years ago, I modelled a complex chemical reaction on similar lines. Unfortunately, like my work with Balaena, it never saw the light of day. With Balaena the patents can be found in dead patent databases, but there is no evidence of the other.
Some of these projects have very strange gestations. Many ears ago, I did some data analysis for British Rail about cable breaks. Recently, the son of one of the engineers, I worked with, contacted me, as he was now working for Network Rail on a similar project.
Comment by AnonW | November 15, 2022 |
I agree with you that the LAES technology looks very promising and that good ideas sometimes spend many years ‘in the long grass’ before emerging. I wonder however if there are lessons that could be learnt about the successful promotion of nascent technology that would project its potential more effectively than the practice of feeding an indiscriminate media machine.
Comment by fammorris | November 16, 2022 |
There is a bit of a chicken/egg situation with all such new technologies. Project financiers like a proven track record, so they know what returns they can expect from their investment. This is now well established for wind and solar. But new tech can’t provide that until they’ve built some pilot plants to establish what costs/income are likely to be. So they need venture capital to set that up.
As the FT article notes, projects like LAES are expensive to build. I had thought that Highview already had the finance for the Carrington plant (in fact, that it was about to start operating), but it seems that’s not the case. I’ve been looking for the status on their progress in other countries, such as Spain, where they supposedly have an agreement with a leading energy company. But I couldn’t find anything recent, so I’m starting to wonder whether that’s hot air too.
Comment by Peter Robins | November 16, 2022 |
Highview are currently looking for a Senior Planner (a project manager type of role) at Carrington, so perhaps this project is at last getting under way. According to the entry on Companies House, Rupert Pearce resigned from Highview 31.3.2023.
Comment by Peter Robins | January 15, 2024 |
According to a LinkedIn individual employed by Ecogen pvt in Chennai he is currently remotely carrying out 3D modelling of pipework for Highview Power. Sounds like Highview are trying to get this Carrington project off the ground but at the moment haven’t got the funding and are having to do it on a shoestring.
Comment by fammorris | January 15, 2024 |
It also seems that Sumitomo have embarked on a LAES demonstration plant in Japan using Highview Power’s IT
https://www.shi.co.jp/english/info/2023/6kgpsq0000003fa8.html
Comment by fammorris | January 15, 2024 |
That looks interesting to use the coolth in LNG to help make the process more efficient.
The maths are probably pretty cool!
Comment by AnonW | January 15, 2024
As the press release states, Sumitomo bought a stake in Highview, which this blog covered in 2020. Wandering off topic, Sumitomo also bought a stake in the Israeli company H2Pro in 2020, and I see they signed an MoU with them last year. Their press release https://www.sumitomocorp.com/en/europe/news/topics/2023/group/20230309 explains the process. What caught my eye is the claim that the membrane-free process can convert water into H with 95% efficiency, way better than standard electrolysers. If the planned implementations confirm that, it’ll be interesting to see how that affects the price of green H.
Comment by Peter Robins | January 17, 2024
I came across H2Pro a few years back
and it does seem they’ve managed to raise interest and perhaps more
importantly funding from a wide
range of sources which are to some extent is summarised in the following – I know there are others like Hyundai https://tracxn.com/d/companies/h2pro/__0zFq1QM8EtUdhDAFhwYn3Q6Hxdd-7nIT0A6gqyVOnVM
If it turns out to be successful it’s not just the impact it has on price but the impact it has on the companies that have based their futures on a particular solution that will inevitably turn out to be a blind alley.
Comment by fammorris | January 17, 2024
There’s more on the status at Carrington in Highview’s written submission to the Lords committee inquiry last September. This states “Highview Power … has completed engineering and procurement for the Carrington project, which is about to start construction.” That would tie in for their now looking for a project mgr. Their submission also states “The speed and success of the programme will be hugely dependent on the nature and amount of government support for long-duration energy storage over the coming years, particularly its potential positive effect on investments through guaranteed revenue streams that increase certainty for investors.” So the proposed Cap and Floor scheme should help with that.
There’s a lot of interesting submissions to this Inquiry. https://committees.parliament.uk/work/7872/longduration-energy-storage/publications/
Comment by Peter Robins | January 15, 2024 |