Pumped Storage Hydro

RheEnergise secures grant to advance energy storage system

RheEnergise secures grant to advance energy storage system

RheEnergise reports that, in partnership with the University of Greenwich and University of Exeter, it secured a grant of £1 million (US$1.2 million) for its High-Density Hydro energy storage system, funded through the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio as part of the UK Government’s Energy Entrepreneurs Fund.

RheEnergise’s storage system uses a fluid that is 2.5 times denser than water (similar in viscosity to cream), which therefore can provide 2.5 times the power and 2.5 times the energy when compared to conventional hydropower systems that rely on water, according to a release. This means RheEnergise can deploy its system – consisting of storage tanks buried underground and connected by underground pipes — beneath the surface of hills rather than mountains, opening up commercial opportunities. Projects will range from 5 MW to 100 MW and can work with vertical elevations as low as 100 m or less, RheEnergise said.

The grant will fund work to identify and test waste materials that could be used in the high-density fluid (HDF), an environmentally benign alternative to water, that is integral to the system. The research project, funded by BEIS’s Energy Entrepreneurs Fund (EEF), wants to identify minerals and waste streams that can be recycled into the high-density fluid and can be locally sourced, rather than having to rely on minerals imported from overseas. RheEnergise said it will examine waste and tailing from various sources but in particular from mines and quarries.

“The project has the potential to solve three huge questions that affect people daily and globally: those of climate change mitigation, delivering firm power supply from renewables and how to use waste from other industries for new purposes, creating truly circular economies,” said Stephen Crosher, chief executive of RheEnergise. “The government grant … will help us to cut the operating cost of our hydro energy storage system, whilst increasing its sustainability. By using locally sourced waste materials, we can lower the costs of our projects, reduce carbon emissions from transportation and processing and create a new circular economy where none currently exists.”

Later this year, RheEnergise will start work on building a 250 kW/1 MWh (four hours) demonstrator of its High-Density Hydro energy storage system at a site near Plymouth, Devon, and is planning to have its first 5 MW grid-scale project in commercial operation within the next three to five years.

RheEnergise’s analysis of potential project opportunities has indicated that there are about 6,500 site opportunities in the UK, about 115,000 in Europe, about 345,000 in North America and about 500,000 in Africa and the Middle East.