With the construction of the GridScale demonstration plant, the concept of storing renewable energy in stones has been brought one step closer to implementation. The plant will be the largest electricity storage facility in Denmark with a capacity of 10 MWh. The project is funded by the Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP) of the Danish Energy Agency

In a large, insulated steel tank, pea-sized stones heated to 600 ° C are the focus of a new innovation project aimed at: to achieve a breakthrough in the storage of intermittent wind and solar energy.

The technology that stores electricity in the form of heat in stones is called GridScale and can be a cheap and efficient alternative to using solar and wind energy in lithium-based batteries. storage. While lithium batteries are only cost-effective for short periods of up to four hours, the GridScale electricity storage system provides cost-effective support for longer periods, up to a week.

“Creating a 100 percent renewable electricity supply the only real challenge is that we can’t put the electricity generated in windy and sunny weather for later use.Demand and production don’t follow the same pattern.There are no commercial solutions to this problem yet, but we hope we can do that with our GridScale energy storage system said Henrik Stiesdal, founder of the air conditioning company Stiesdal Storage Technologies, which is behind the technology.

In short, GridScale technology is the process of breaking basalt from small, pea-sized stones into one or more insulated steel tanks. in a standing set heated and cooled. The storage is filled by a system of compressors and turbines that pump heat energy from one or more storage tanks filled with cold stones to a similar number of storage tanks filled with hot stones when excess energy from wind or the sun is available.

This means that stones in cold tanks will be very cold, while stones in hot tanks will be very hot, up to 600 ° C. The heat can be stored in the stones for several days and the number of tanks filled with stones can be varied depending on the length of storage time required. they become warmer in cold tanks. The system is based on a low-cost storage material and a well-known, well-known technology for charging and discharging.

“Basalt is a low-cost and sustainable material that can store large amounts of energy in a small space and We are now developing a prototype of storage technology to show how to solve the problem of renewable energy storage, which is one of the biggest challenges in the development of sustainable energy worldwide, ”said Ole Alm, head of development at Andel Energy Group, which is also involved in the project.

The GridScale prototype will be the largest storage facility in the Danish electricity system, and one of the biggest challenges will be to make storage flexibility available on the electricity markets in the best possible way. Consequently, this will also be part of the project. The exact location of the facility has not yet been determined. It will certainly be in the eastern part of Denmark, South or West Zealand or Lolland-Falster, where production from new large photovoltaic units in particular is growing faster than consumption can keep up with it. The three-year project has a total budget of DKK 35 million (EUR 4.7 million)

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