EDF to demonstrate four long duration energy storage technologies in UK

EDF UK has been awarded £2 million ($2.7 million) from the UK government to demonstrate hydrogen, compressed air and next-gen battery storage.

The four technologies, all still in the innovation stage, offer the potential for the longer duration energy storage that is required to support balancing of the intermittency of wind and solar energies.

A recent study from Aurora Energy Research found that up to 24GW of longer duration storage, longer than 4 hours, could be required in the UK by 2035 to meet the net zero target for the power sector.

The goal of the demonstrators, which are supported from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s (BEIS) £68 million Longer Duration Energy Storage Demonstration (LODES) innovation competition, is to accelerate commercialisation of the technologies.

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With the ability to store energy for periods up to months, they have the potential to support variations on daily up to seasonal scales.

“I’m delighted that EDF is involved in four innovative projects within the LODES programme, covering a range of innovative technologies,” says Patrick Dupeyrat, R&D Director at EDF UK.

“These all have the potential to complement our zero carbon generation and battery storage assets to help Britain achieve net zero.”

Hydrogen storage

The first project, HyDUS, will store electricity as hydrogen in metal hydride form in depleted uranium, with release via a reversible fuel cell. When stored in this form, UH3, hydrogen has approximately two times the volumetric energy density of liquid hydrogen, enabling it to be stored more efficiently.

Depleted uranium U238 will be from the Urenco nuclear consortium as a waste product from fuel production and reprocessed spent MOX fuel. Other partners include the University of Bristol and UKAEA.

Vanadium flow and zinc battery storage

Pivot Power, a part of EDF Renewables, will support the delivery of two demonstration projects. The first, which will be delivered in partnership with energy storage manufacturer Invinity Energy Systems, will establish the feasibility of developing one of the UK’s largest storage-enabled solar power resources. If selected, phase two of this project would see delivery of a solar coupled 10MW/40MWh Invinity vanadium flow battery.

As part of the project, Invinity will supply two of its VS3 vanadium redox flow units, which will be used for testing and validation purposes.

For the second, Pivot Power will alongside Toronto-based e-Zinc, with support from Frontier Economics, to deploy technology that stores energy in zinc, an inexpensive and widely available metal with a high energy density.

The project aims to deliver a 24-hour storage system of up to 100kW and will begin with a feasibility study to create a road map for the technology’s UK rollout. Subject to the success of phase one, the build out will follow in the second phase, building on e-Zinc’s first commercial system at a site near Toronto.

Compressed air storage

The final project, ‘Stratostore’, will explore how electricity can be stored as compressed air and released to meet system demand. The storage is proposed in mothballed EDF owned gas cavities in Cheshire and the initial plan is to assess a 5MW plant that could supply more than 8,000 homes and how this could be scaled up to a larger 100+MW scheme.

Other partners include EDF Thermal Generation, IO Consulting and the Canadian compressed air specialist Hydrostor.