Liquefied air could transform energy market

How to store energy in a cheap and mobile form has stumped researchers for years, with large-scale power stored on a grid and batteries currently expensive and inefficient. However, recently some experts have been looking into developing liquefied air to help cut carbon emissions, increase energy security and provide a more sustainable global energy market.

Liquefied air – created by cooling air to almost -200 °C – allows energy to be stored for later use. It is hoped that this could be an efficient way to help the solar and wind industries to better store generated energy.

UK-based company Highview Power Storage has raised as much as $18m towards developing the technology, and has been running a pilot plant in Slough since 2011. The UK government has been keen to support this technology, awarding two proposed Highview plants funding as part of a new technology competition. Highview say that one of their plants could begin being built in July.

The company’s CEO, Gareth Brett, told The Engineer that the proposed facility would be more efficient than the test plant in Slough: “Physically it’s not much bigger than the Slough plant but the capacity of the process is about ten times bigger. We’ll be able to generate around 5MW of electricity and run for around six hours.”

Brett says that he expected efficiency of the plant, at the National Grid’s Grain Liquefied Natural Gas terminal on the Isle of Grain, would increase by between 50 to 60 percent, adding: “It’s a significant improvement. Generally we wouldn’t expect to get that sort of efficiency until we were at really quite a large system [of around 20MW].”