Thermal Energy Storage Tour with Stiesdal Gridscale Battery

Very fascinating how so much of tech around finally boils down to the role of material science. Thanks for sharing.

Nice to see a video on this technology! Compared to other types of longer term energy storage, I can see two big advantages to this that I don't think I've seen mentioned anywhere. The first is the potential to very cheaply add lots of extra charging power on top of the heat pump using simple resistive heating. That should be useful during infrequent periods of very low, or even negative, electricity prices where you just want to charge as much as possible no matter the efficiency. The second is that since this system is based on heat, it should be cheap to add a "deep backup" option were you simply provide the heat from stored chemical fuels once the heat storage is empty. The efficiency would be low, but I think it would be very useful for grids primarily based on wind power since it could hold you over through the very rare periods of multiple weeks of low wind. That would then save you from having to invest in a completely separate backup system based on gas turbines or the like.

Not usually commenting but just found out your channel, content is amazing. You provide all the necessary information. Well structured, detailled and with schemas. So hard to find these information elsewhere. Thanks for your work!

Interesting to see the step through of how it functions. Looking forward to seeing them grow and become a standard part of utility scale as well as independent grid solutions. Great to see the simple technology become even more appealing in tandem with solar and wind.

That was great Rosie. It really fleshed out visually what Dave at 'Just have a think' went into in some detail. Keep up the good work.

Sent here via let’s have a think. Great interview and tour, would love to see other interviews with new grid technology providers. Thanks!

Nice Video. I think this combined with batteries will be the energy storage of the future. Also nice Siemens D3 turbine in the background at 10:48

Understand the terminology used here as heat pump refers to a compressor and not a reverse cycle ´air conditioner’. Would love to see a video on the feasibility of a reverse cycle air conditioner on claiming waste heat from perhaps a hydrogen fuel cell and raising the secondary circuit fluid temperature to possibly drive a gas turbine to generate electricity.

Very interesting 👌. I think another important factor in increasing the efficiency and decreasing overall product cost is to use it near the onshore wind farms, using the storage material available in that area (less transportation cost) and integrating it with the nearby residential community's or any other necessity's, heating and cooling needs (by product from loss energy at charging and discharging)

Great stuff, thank you

I hadn't thought of using electricity to run a heat pump in relationship to thermal storage. Nice boost in efficiency. Still it seems like the capital costs will be very high, since neither rotating equipment nor pressure vessels are cheap.

What gets me excited about this is how the cost scales so beneficially with storage capacity. Probably for installations with a large capacity but relatively low rating is dominated by the cost of the steel tank rather than the storage medium, which means you have the cube-square law on your side. And then if you want to increase the rating, I guess you just need to get a larger turbine system, so you just pay proportionally for that. Thanks for this!

Thanks for running this channel and especially covering this storage solution. I believe Thermal storage is going to be a big part of the solutions during the energy transition world-over, especially because it will be relatively cheap. I had a quick question, I was looking for the study at 9:57, is it available for people to view/read and learn more?

One metric that I didn't see raised was what is the daily/hourly heat loss of the system? Even if it is only targeted at daily cycling that would be interesting to know.

great job and thanks

Thanks 👍

Thanks 🙏!!!!

Nice one a practical, in thermal storage of energy.

Nice video! Thank you for introducing this technology! I agree with the idea that you need to disconnect the costs of charging, discharging, and storage equipment in order to enable longer-term storage capabilities by minimizing the third component (storage). But often these types of technologies are presented in a vacuum relative to other competitors. The gentleman interviewed mentioned the primary drawback of batteries (cost), but he did not mention the benefits of batteries (efficiency and response time, for instance) nor did he talk about the more direct competitors to his product. In this space, hydrogen is another player which will have benefits and drawbacks and another notable technology is Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES). He also did not cover important drawbacks, such as the fact that such a large amount of waste heat may NOT have much utility in summertime except in specific industrial application. In order for this technology to find at least a single market in which to play, it needs to beat ALL other comers, not just batteries. The important figures of merit that come to mind immediately are: - efficiency (both one-way and round-trip since technologies like this one and hydrogen have differences on charge and discharge) - cost (of the various components) - size (floorspace or volume, whichever is important for potential applications) - durability (life) - energy lost in storage over time - energy storage horizon (What is the shortest and longest amount of time that this technology can be reasonably applied to store energy? Seconds, minutes, hours, one day, several days, a week, several weeks, months?) - environmental impacts The point is that we need longer-term storage technologies like this or hydrogen or ARES (or others or all of the above) that can make one week or longer storage an affordable reality, but they all have their benefits and drawbacks. I would be interested in a survey of prospective technologies in this long-term storage space. If you want to address the VALUE side of the renewables equation, that is perhaps the biggest hurdle.

Thanks for the tour. I prefer the sodium acetate as a storage of heat. Then you can add water back as needed to give the year up. The advantage is the long term storage for heat. The disadvantage is the size necessary and cost of material.