Energy storage has a dual purpose: it plugs gaps when the wind drops or the sun stops shining, and it allows users to buy cheap off-peak power and use it when they need it.
Until now, the focus of storage for industry has been mainly on giant conventional batteries, which National Grid hopes to hook up to the grid faster, though many green energy projects have been delayed. But there's growing interest in storing energy in the form of heat- and that's where the everyday ingredients such as air, salt and bricks come into the picture, because these materials are really good at holding warmth.
A clutch of startups are now aiming to industrialise the practice.
Heat storage is coming up the agenda: last month a Lords committee urged the UK to take energy storage more seriously, and this month a conference run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) will hear the case for thermal batteries. Heat provides more than half the total energy demanded by industry, but IMechE says electric batteries and hydrogen have hogged the limelight, to the neglect of simple systems storing heat. One featured technology at the meeting will be the Heatcube developed by a Norwegian firm, Kyoto Group. It comes in the form of tanks filled with salt, installed at the site where the heat is needed.
Heatcube's vertical salt tanks are charged by electricity during periods of low cost. Molten salt is particularly good at holding heat at temperatures up to 500C.
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