Power supply
Swinnerton, the answer needs to be viewed through the prism of supply-and-demand-driven pricing in the wholesale power markets.
DNV’s headquarter’s in Hovik, Norway – one of many global pioneers of SPHS.
Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Norway, USA and Japan.
“SPHS is a better option [over] UGES because power – tunnels, turbines, generators – and energy storage – dam, water, land – costs are low. This makes SPHS an option to store energy in hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal and pluriannual cycles with the same plant. However, much will depend on the topography and water availability. SPHS would only be able to supply some of the long-term energy demands of Europe, for example, because of a lack of water and a possible conflict over water use.”
In Australia, meanwhile, Green Gravity’s energy storage solution offers a practical guide to energy storage – harnessing the principles of gravity and kinetic energy to store and dispatch energy by lifting and lowering heavy-weighted objects.
Due to basic physics, the amount of energy created will be less than the amount of energy used to lift the heavy objects to the surface. Indeed, this is the case for all energy storage devices – batteries, pumped hydro and so on – as there is always some loss of energy as it is converted between forms, according to Green Gravity Founder and CEO, Mark Swinnerton. “Energy storage technologies can see efficiency levels of 50–90% depending on their nature,” says Swinnerton. “Because of these energy losses, it is preferable to use energy directly rather than store it. However, as we increase renewable production it becomes more difficult to directly consume all of the production, necessitating the use of energy storage.”
$70.6bn
The value of the global gravity energy storage systems market in 2022. BlueWeave Consulting
32
Gravity remains key to storage Swinnerton notes that gravity energy storage systems deliver around 80% energy efficiency. “For our technology, the energy losses are caused by things like heat in motors, friction from ropes and the use of energy to manage the logistics of the heavy objects.” So, the obvious question is, how can gravity energy storage systems make economic sense, given the associated energy losses – as with other methods? For
“When there is excess renewable energy production – say at lunchtime – the power price is low, and when there is high demand and low renewable production – say, at dinnertime – the price is high. If an energy storage device is charged when the price is low and discharged when the price is high, then the economics can work,” says Swinnerton. Self-evidently, reducing energy inefficiency and loss is always the objective. Unsurprisingly, for Green Gravity, addressing such issues is an ongoing process technologically. “The most important technical challenge for Green Gravity is how to install the energy storage system in a wide variety of legacy mine sites. Researching how to adapt the system to a wider set of conditions will increase the number of locations our technology can be installed, thereby increasing the benefits to the renewable energy transition,” Swinnerton says. “The supply chain benefits of gravitational energy storage technologies is significant,” he adds. “Green Gravity is able to repurpose mines and, along with that, a portion of infrastructure. The components utilised in our system are proven and available, and in most cases are available locally in countries. Some other storage technologies, particularly chemical storage systems, utilise strategic or rare resources in their supply chains.”
Any policy vacuum needs to be filled Naturally, given Green Gravity is based in Australia, Swinnerton needs to keep a constant eye on Australian government policy in this particular space. And while the government there has been “getting it right” in some areas – such as with the establishment of the Australian Renewable Energy Authority (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), improvements are needed elsewhere. While there are well-established processes and signals to bring energy storage to the market, more can be done to set clearer price signals for the future needs of the grid and to incentivise a wider set of metrics to be required in the provision of capacity – such as sovereign capacity, sustainability and so on – according to Swinnerton. Specifically, for storage assets in the National Electricity Market (NEM), the fee structures – such as the Distribution Use of System (DUoS) – are outdated and not well suited for renewable energy storage, which is creating a disincentive to bring technology to market, says Swinnerton. His experience in Australia, however, confirms a wider truth in the gravity energy storage space – namely, that technological advances will likely be less relevant unless local government policies and initiatives are in place to underpin them as well. That would then make the business use case easier for would-be participants. ●
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
DNV
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