The world’s largest demonstration plant for a new kind of renewable energy storage is up and running in the west of the China. Called liquid-air energy storage (LAES) the plant uses renewable electricity to compress air to extreme densities until it turns to liquid. It can then be rapidly released to power a turbine and discharge that green energy back into the grid.
not the best article, but this shit is awesome! 600mwh is a demo project in China.
This matches battery deployment costs in china if the compressor is half power. It is cheaper with more storage. Batteries don’t scale much lower in cost with more of them. So, if you need want an extra 600mwh+ of storage that can charge slower than batteries (but at the same time) then this is perfect.
Solar in southern Canada needs H2 electrolysis in summer to provide baseload in winter. Lots of storage needed to run baseload+electrolysis 24/7 in summer, and winter resilience. This tech is only 50% efficient, but current market for pure H2 is minimal, and Ammonia production is both its main use, and a massively larger market. Also, ammonia is massively larger volumetric energy density, and easy to store. A giant solar farm in Canada can pair with electric haber bosch plant to produce ammonia from green H2, and LAES can provide pure N2. (Pure O2 is also separated by liquifaction). Haber Bosch plant can also provide even higher waste heat than its 200C pressured water extraction, boosting LAES efficiency.
This is also an energy storage abundance path with different skillset than batteries…
Is ammonia a larger market because they produce their own grey H2 in the process of making ammonia?
This needs a huge amount of energy surplus to provide enough in the summer and using ammonia for heat/energy is in direct contrast to using it using it for the market isn’t it? Except when you’d only use the expansion of liquid to gaseous and then use gaseous ammonia in a nearby plant. My guess would be anything green H2 will be too high demand and expensive to use as a fuel
Yes, but you need huge summer surplus solar to provide baseload in winter too. Ammonia in great lakes/mid west region market price is very profitable from solar production in the area.
It’s more about making unlimited ammonia and still having a use for it for someone in the world in some season.
Solar based baseload pricing can work at 2c/kwh daytime summer, and 15-20c/kwh daytime winter. Where legacy plants are kept around for 2 months of the year. But Ammonia is competitive to make/store for the winter and deliver power at around that cost, especially through home/V2H fuel cells, but also at higher backup power pricing. You need ammonia winter reserve for spring sales anyway.