200 MWh battery stores solar power with CO2

The new CO2 battery system can operate for 25 years without loss of efficiency, helping to save costs for energy storage.

Energy Dome (Italy) company develops CO2 batteries used to store solar energy during the day, when there is excess energy, then generate electricity at night and peak hours, Interesting Engineering on December 1 reported believe. The new battery system will also overcome the performance degradation problem common with lithium-ion batteries.

Energy Dome's new battery system helps to efficiently store solar electricity.

With huge solar farm projects underway, such as the 5,261 hectare Mammoth Solar farm in the US with an investment of $1.5 billion, the world needs effective measures to store renewable energy. create. 'Grid systems around the world need the cheap and efficient storage that comes with renewable energy,' said Claudio Spadacini, CEO of Energy Dome. According to Energy Dome, their new technology will enable wind and solar power generation 24 hours a day.

Unlike lithium-ion, which degrades significantly after about 10 years of use, CO2 batteries retain their performance throughout their expected 25-year operating life. This means that the cost to store energy will be about half that of a lithium-ion battery of the same capacity, Energy Dome explains.

Energy Dome's batteries use CO2 in a closed loop, in which CO2 is converted from gas to liquid and back to gas. The dome in the company's name is an inflatable storage tank filled with gaseous CO2.

When charging, the system uses electricity from the grid to operate a machine that sucks CO2 from storage and compresses it, generates heat, and transfers it to a heat energy storage device. The CO2 is then liquefied and stored in tanks at room temperature, completing the charge cycle.

When power is generated, the cycle is reversed. The system evaporates the liquid, recovers heat from the thermal energy storage system, and pushes hot CO2 into the turbine to power the generator.

CO2 batteries have a capacity of about 200 MWh. The system does not emit CO2 at all during the charging and generating cycles. In addition, Energy Dome will need a large amount of CO2 to scale up in the future, so it can use CO2 from carbon capture plants (which suck carbon out of the atmosphere), such as the Direct Gas Capture Facility. (DAC) is under construction in the UK. This both helps the battery system to significantly increase its capacity, and allows the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.