Highview Power’s Cryogenic Solutions are Heating Up with the Help of New Funding

Highview Power, a global leader in long duration energy storage solutions has announced that their most recent round of funding has netted them over $70 million via a press release. This will allow the company to rapidly move additional projects into the commercialization phase on a global scale. This includes over 4GWh of projects across the United States, Europe and Latin America, as well as many smaller scale 700MWh projects. Further projects are being taken on in Spain, the Middle East and South Africa thank to a collaboration with TSK, a global leader in engineering and construction.

Image courtesy of Highview Power. 

All of these projects are looking to implement Highview Power’s patented cryogenic energy storage technology. This technology, explained on Highview Power’s website, utilizes the cooling of air into a liquid, and then exposing it to ambient temperatures in order to have the air rapidly expand, with the power to drive a turbine, thus creating electricity. Consisting of three main stages, the charging stage, storing stage and recovery stage. In the charge stage, air is taken in by the system and cooled down to a crisp -196oC (-320oF), turning it into a liquid. The liquid air is then stored in tanks, waiting to be utilized. When needed, the liquid air is then expanded into a gas to power whatever will produce the electricity. This system, using a thermodynamic cycle, can interface with many different industrial applications as well as LNK regasification and peaking plants. This allows users to take advantage of the steams that are produced in excess by their plant and apply it to create energy. In terms of numbers, a 50 MW/250 MWh plant can store enough power for 100,000 homes with this technology, a novel feat.

The CRYOBatteryTM is the only cryogenic energy storage system on the market as of today, and is also freely locatable while offering weeks of storage. This kind of capability can allow these systems to one day replace thermal and nuclear baseload power, due to its very similar performance.

This CRYOBatteryTM technology is offering a novel way to look at power generation in a clean way. This can pave the way for renewables to truly compete with our current fossil fuel generation capabilities, as well as other top notch energy generation systems like nuclear. As we can see, there is a lot going for this technology, and with the $145 million backing it, we are, by far not the first to see that.