Joint IEA Energy Storage Task 36 – Supergen Energy Storage Network+ “Carnot Batteries – Academia meets Industry“

The 2050 net-zero carbon economy requires a much higher penetration of renewable sources (RES) into our energy system. This poses a significant challenge in shifting the provision of base-load energy generation to intermittent energy generation and thus energy network stability. This calls for highly flexible, low-cost and energy-and-resource-efficient energy storage technologies to balance the energy supply and demand mismatch. Among the storage technology options, the emerging Carnot Battery technology provides a potentially low-cost and site-independent solution for electricity storage at medium to large scale. Carnot Batteries work by transforming electricity into thermal exergy, storing the thermal energy in inexpensive media (e.g. rocks, molten salts), which can convert back to electricity when required. In addition, Carnot Batteries provide new opportunities for coupling of energy vectors through integrated power & thermal energy management.

The aim of this webinar is to bring together both Industry and Academia communities to identify major challenges in Carnot Batteries (CB) and their role in future zero-carbon energy system, and to discuss how we may work together to address the challenges. The focus will be on understanding the state-of-art in the development and demonstration of key CB components (e.g. compressors, expanders, heat exchangers, pumps, heat/cold storage), their performance under both static and dynamic, as well as under designed and off-designed conditions, and economic aspects.

This event was held online on the January 28th and January 29th at 9.30am-12.30pm. The agenda is available here.

The recording of the workshop is available below.

Day 1

Day 2

Speakers include:

BEIS

Siemens Gamesa

University of Pisa

MAN Energy Solutions

City University of London

University of Cambridge

Highview Power

Heatric/Meggit

Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

The workshop was jointly organized by the IEA Energy Storage Task 36, the UK Supergen Energy Storage Network+ and the University of Birmingham Centre for Energy Storage.

Lead organisers of the event:

Adriano Sciacovelli, University of Birmingham, UK

Yulong Ding, University of Birmingham, UK

Andrea Gutierrez Rojas, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany

Dan Bauer, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Germany