Can Highview Power’s CRYOBattery Compete With Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity?
In this article on the Telegraph, Rupert Pearce, who is Highview’s chief executive and ex-head of the satellite company Inmarsat, discloses this.
Highview is well beyond the pilot phase and is developing its first large UK plant in Humberside, today Britain’s top hub for North Sea wind. It will offer 2.5GW for over 12 hours, or 0.5GW for over 60 hours, and so forth, and should be up and running by late 2024.
The Humberside plant is new to me, as it has not been previously announced by Highview Power.
- If it is built it will be megahuge with a storage capacity of 30 GWh and a maximum output of 2.5 GW.
- Humberside with its connections to North Sea Wind, will be an ideal location for a huge CRYOBattery.
- The world’s largest pumped storage hydroelectric power station is Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station in China and it is 40 GWh.
Pumped storage hydroelectric power stations are the gold standard of energy storage.
In the UK we have four pumped storage hydroelectric power stations.
- Cruachan Power Station – 7.1 GWh
- Dinorwig Power Station (Electric Mountain) – 9.1 GWh
- Falls of Foyers – 10 GWh
- Ffestiniog Power Station 1 GWh
With two more under construction.
- Coire Glas Power Station – 30 GWh
- Red John Power Station – 2.8 GWh
As energy is agnostic, 30 GWh of pumped storage hydroelectric power at Coire Glas is the equivalent of 30 GWh in Highview Power’s proposed Humberside CRYOBattery.
Advantages Of CRYOBatteries Over Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Power
I can think of these advantages.
- Cost
- Could be build on the flat lands of East Anglia or Lincolnshire
- Factory-built
- NIMBYs won’t have much to argue about
- No dams
- No flooding of valleys
- No massive construction sites.
- No mountains required
- No tunnels
- Small footprint
I suspect that a large CRYOBattery could be built well within a year of starting construction.
Rupert Pearce’s Dream
The Telegraph article says this and I suspect it’s a quote from Rupert Pearce.
Further projects 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 for four days at a time, or whatever time/power mix is optimal.
6 GW for four days is 576 GWh, which if it were spread around twenty sites is 28.8 GWh per site, which is just under the 30 GWh of the proposed Humberside CRYOBattery.
Conclusion
You can just imagine the headlines in The Sun!
Man In Bishop’s Stortford Shed Saves The World!
This story on the BBC, which is entitled Meet The British Inventor Who Came Up With A Green Way Of Generating Electricity From Air – In His Shed, explains my suggested headline.
Now that’s what I call success!
How Will Highview Power Affect The Lithium-Ion Grid Battery Market?
In this article on the Telegraph, Rupert Pearce, who is Highview’s chief executive and ex-head of the satellite company Inmarsat, discloses this.
Highview is well beyond the pilot phase and is developing its first large UK plant in Humberside, today Britain’s top hub for North Sea wind. It will offer 2.5GW for over 12 hours, or 0.5GW for over 60 hours, and so forth, and should be up and running by late 2024.
The Humberside plant is new to me, as it has not been previously announced by Highview Power.
- If it is built it will be megahuge with a storage capacity of 30 GWh and a maximum output of 2.5 GW.
- Humberside with its connections to North Sea Wind, will be an ideal location for a huge CRYOBattery.
- The world’s largest battery is at Ouarzazate Solar Power Station in Morocco and it is 3 GWh.
- The world’s largest pumped storage power station is Fengning Pumped Storage Power Station in China and it is 40 GWh.
The proposed Humberside battery also has a smaller sibling under construction at Carrington in Manchester.
This will have a storage capacity of 250 MWh and a maximum output of 50 MW.
Factors Affecting The Choice
Several factors will affect the choice between lithium-ion batteries and Highview Power’s CRYOBattery.
Reliability
Reliability is paramount and whilst lithium-ion batteries batteries have a high level of reliability, there probably needs to be more development and quality assurance before CRYOBatteries have a similar level of reliability.
Size
The largest lithium-ion battery, that has been proposed in the UK, is the 320 MW/640 MWh battery that will be installed at the Gateway Energy Centre in Essex.
This size of CRYOBattery should be possible, but this size is probably in range of both lithium-ion and CRYOBatteries.
Safety
The Wikipedia entry for Battery Storage Power Station has this to say about Safety.
Some batteries operating at high temperatures (sodium–sulfur battery) or using corrosive components are subject to calendar ageing, or failure even if not used. Other technologies suffer from cycle ageing, or deterioration caused by charge-discharge cycles. This deterioration is generally higher at high charging rates. These two types of ageing cause a loss of performance (capacity or voltage decrease), overheating, and may eventually lead to critical failure (electrolyte leaks, fire, explosion).
An example of the latter was a Tesla Megapack in Geelong which caught fire, fire and subsequent explosion of battery farm in Arizona, fire of Moss Landing battery farm. Concerns about possible fire and explosion of a battery module were also raised during residential protests against Cleve Hill solar farm in United Kingdom. Battery fire in Illinois resulted in “thousands of residents” being evacuated, and there were 23 battery farm fires in South Korea over the period of two years. Battery fires may release a number of dangerous gases, including highly corrosive and toxic hydrogen fluoride.
The long term safety of a CRYOBattery is probably not yet known in detail, but I suspect in some applications, CRYOBatteries could be safer than chemical batteries.
Environmental Factors
I suspect that CRYOBatteries can be built without any hard-to-mine or environmentally-unfriendly materials like lithium.
Cost
The article in The Telegraph, says this about costs.
Mr Pearce said Highview’s levelised cost of energy (LCOE) would start at $140-$150, below lithium, and then slide on a “glide path” to $100 with over time.
It does look that the all important factor of cost could be the clincher in the choice between the two systems.
For larger batteries, the CRYOBattery will probably have a larger advantage.
Conclusion
I can see Highview Power and their CRYOBatteries putting up a good fight against lithium-ion batteries, especially with larger batteries, where they have a larger cost advantage.
In the UK, we will know they have won an advantage, if the two big battery-storage funds; Gore Street and Gresham House, start to install CRYOBatteries.
Highview Chief Rupert Pearce On The Cold Batteries That Could Save The Planet
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Sunday Times.
It is an article very much worth a read, as it talks about former Inmarsat boss; Rupert Pearce and his new position as boss at Highview Power.
I have followed Highview Power for a few years.
I first wrote about the company in British Start-Up Beats World To Holy Grail Of Cheap Energy Storage For Wind And Solar, after reading about the company in the Daily Telegraph in August 2019.
They seem to have had good press in the last three years and have generated a steady stream of orders from Spain, Chile and Scotland.
But progress seems to have been slow to get the first full-size system at Carrington completed.
It does seem , that Rupert Pearce could be the professional boss they need?
Highview Power ‘s CRYOBatteries certainly have potential.
Highview Power CRYOBatteries Compared To Lithium-Ion Batteries
Highview Power ‘s CRYOBatteries do not use any exotic metals or materials, that are not readily available, whereas lithium-ion batteries use lots of rare metals and electricity in their manufacture.
CRYOBatteries can also be expanded in capacity by just adding more liquid-air tanks.
Highview Power CRYOBatteries Typically Cost £500 Million
This figure is disclosed in the Sunday Times article.
For that you probably get a power station, with these characteristics.
- 50 MW Output.
- Five to eight hour storage.
- No emissions.
- Well-understood maintenance.
- An environmentally-friendly plant.
- Long battery life.
But my experience tells me, that like large lithium-ion batteries used for grid storage, that CRYOBatteries could be an asset that will appeal to large financial companies.
- At present, Highview Power have not run a 50 MW CRYOBattery, but once they show high reliability, I can envisage the energy storage funds taking a good look.
- At £500 million a throw, they are a good size with probably a decent return for insurance companies and pension funds.
See World’s Largest Wind Farm Attracts Huge Backing From Insurance Giant for Aviva’s view on investing in massive green infrastructure.
I very much feel, that with his City connections and experience, that Rupert Pearce might be the right person to arrange financing for CRYOBatteries.
I will add a story from the financing of Artemis, which was the project management system, that I wrote in the 1970s.
Normally we leased or rented the systems, but some companies wanted to buy them outright, so we came up with a price of something like £125,000. Our bank were happy to fund these systems, when the purchaser was someone like BP, Shell, Bechtel, Brown & Root or British Aerospace. Later on, the bank would package together several systems and get us a better deal.
Intriguingly, £125,000 in the late 1970s is about half a billion now. I suspect, I’m being naive to suggest that Highview’s problem of funding multiple sales is similar to the one we had fifty years ago.
Highview Power CRYOBatteries And Wind And Solar Farms
I discussed the use of CRYOBatteries with solar power in The Power Of Solar With A Large Battery.
As the Highview Power press release, on which I based the article has now been deleted, I would assume that that project has fallen through. But the principles still apply!
But surely, a wind farm paired with an appropriately-sized CRYOBattery would ensure a steady supply of power?
Could CRYOBatteries Be Used With Floating Offshore Wind Farms?
In ScotWind N3 Offshore Wind Farm, I described an unusual wind farm proposed by Magnora ASA.
- This page on their web site outlines their project.
- It will be technology agnostic, with 15MW turbines and a total capacity of 500MW
- It will use floating offshore wind with a concrete floater
- It is estimated, that it will have a capacity factor of 56 %.
- The water depth will be an astonishing 106-125m
- The construction and operation will use local facilities at Stornoway and Kishorn Ports.
- The floater will have local and Scottish content.
The floater will be key to the whole wind farm.
- It will certainly have an offshore substation to connect the wind turbines to the cable to the shore.
- Magnora may be proposing to add a hydrogen electrolyser.
- Tanks within the concrete floater can be used to store gases.
I wonder if CRYOBatteries could be installed on the concrete floaters, that would be used to smooth the electrical output of the wind farm?
Note that in the past, concrete semi-submersible concrete structures have been used to host all kinds of gas and oil processing equipment.
Conclusion
I feel that Highview Power have made a good choice of Chief Executive and I have high hopes he can awaken a company with masses of potential.
All You Want To Know About Highview Power
This article on Power is entitled Market Prospects Heating Up for Cryogenic Energy Storage.
It talks in detail about the technology, financing and market prospects for Highview Power and their CRYOBattery.
- Their batteries store energy by liquifying air and storing it in large tanks.
- To recover the energy, the air is encouraged to go to a gaseous phase and put through an air turbine.
- Their first commercial system is being built at Carrington near Manchester.
- The Carrington system will have an output of 50 MW and be able to store up to 250 MWh.
- Other systems are under development for Vermont and Spain.
- The systems are built like Leho from readily available components from the oil and gas industry.
One of my regrets in life, is that I missed the crowdfunding for this company!
Read the article as you might find one of Highview Power’s CRYOBatteries coming to a site near you.
Power’s article is the best yet on describing the technology.
The Anonymous Widower 