BEIS awards £33m to long-duration energy storage demos

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has awarded a total of £32.9 million to five innovation projects for the second phase of its Longer Duration Energy Storage competition.

The first phase of the competition saw £2.7 million awarded to 19 projects, the most promising of which have now received further funding to build prototypes and demonstrators.

The projects:

• Edinburgh-based StorTera will receive £5.02 million to build a prototype demonstrator of its single liquid flow battery technology (SLIQ), which is claimed to offer sustainability, efficiency and high energy density.
• Sunamp in East Lothian will receive £9.25 million to trial its thermal battery, which uses phase change materials to store heat, in 100 homes across the UK. The company will extend the storage duration and capacity of the system and pair it with other households energy technologies.
• The University of Sheffield will receive £2.6 million to develop a prototype modular thermal energy storage system. The prototype systems will be manufactured by Loughborough University and deployed at the Creative Energy Homes campus at the University of Nottingham.
• RheEnergise will receive £8.24 million to build a demonstrator of its pumped storage system near Plymouth. The system uses an environmentally safe mineral-rich fluid more than two and half times denser than water, meaning it can work on gentle slopes, without steep dam walls or high mountains like traditional pumped hydro storage.
• EDF, in partnership with the University of Bristol, Urenco and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), will receive £7.73 million to develop a hydrogen storage demonstrator utilising depleted uranium at UKAEA’s Culham Science Centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Electrolysers will be used to produce hydrogen, which can then either be used directly or to generate electricity via fuel cells.

Climate minister Graham Stuart said: “Accelerating renewables is key to boosting our energy resilience. Energy storage helps us get the full benefit of these renewables, improving efficiency and helping drive down costs in the long term.

“This £32.9 million government backing will enable green innovators across the UK to develop this technology, helping create new jobs and encouraging private investment, while also safeguarding the UK’s energy security.”