Site items in: Energy Storage

Content Types

To take a deep dive into our archives, please select filters and click Search. Search Results (Found )

Display Options

No Results Found.

Please try modifying your filters and filtering again.

Please add a keyword and/or a dropdown filter to generate a precise search, or use the sitewide search at the top of the page for a more general search.

Searching... Please wait[cancel Search]

Article

Power to Ammonia: The OCI Nitrogen - Geleen case

Trevor Brown May 18, 2017

The Power-to-Ammonia feasibility study includes an assessment of the costs and benefits of producing ammonia from renewable energy at OCI Nitrogen's existing production site in Geleen. Of all the companies who joined forces in the Power-to-Ammonia project, OCI is the only ammonia producer. Its business case for making carbon-free ammonia is especially interesting therefore: not just because of the company's deep understanding of the ammonia market and available technologies, but also because it faces corporate exposure to the financial, operational, and social risks of relying upon a fossil-fueled technology in a carbon constrained future.

Article

Power to Ammonia: The Stedin - Goeree-Overflakkee case

Trevor Brown May 12, 2017

Goeree-Overflakkee, in the southwest corner of The Netherlands, already produces more renewable power than it can consume. But, by 2020, this small island will generate a full 300 MWe of solar and wind, which far "exceeds the electricity demand on the island, rated at maximum 30 MWe peak." Stedin, the local grid operator, has the expensive task of integrating these and future renewable resources into its electricity distribution system. The recent Power-to-Ammonia study included a detailed analysis of Stedin's business case for producing renewable ammonia as a way to store and transport this electricity - enabling the island to become a net exporter of clean energy.

Article

Power to Ammonia: the Eemshaven case

Trevor Brown April 28, 2017

The Institute for Sustainable Process Technology recently published a feasibility study, Power to Ammonia, looking at the possibility of producing and using ammonia in the renewable power sector. This project is based in The Netherlands and is led by a powerful industrial consortium. I wrote about the feasibility study last month, but it deserves closer attention because it examines three entirely separate business cases for integrating ammonia into a renewable energy economy, centered on three site-specific participants in the study: Nuon at Eemshaven, Stedin at Goeree-Overflakkee, and OCI Nitrogen at Geleen. Over the next few years, the group intends to build pilot projects to develop and demonstrate the necessary technologies. Next month, however, these projects will be an important part of the Power-to-Ammonia Conference, in Rotterdam on May 18-19. This article is the first in a series of three that aims to introduce each business case.

Article

The Hydrogen Consensus

Stephen H. Crolius April 27, 2017

Let’s say there is such a thing as the “hydrogen consensus.” Most fundamentally, the consensus holds that hydrogen will be at the center of the sustainable energy economy of the future. By definition, hydrogen from fossil fuels will be off the table. Hydrogen from biomass will be on the table but the amount that can be derived sustainably will be limited by finite resources like land and water. This will leave a yawning gap (in the U.S., 60-70% of total energy consumption) that will be filled with the major renewables -- wind, solar, and geothermal -- and nuclear energy. This may be as far as the consensus goes today, but more detail is now emerging on the global system of production and use that could animate a hydrogen economy.

Article

Ammonia for energy storage: a "revolutionary disruption"

Trevor Brown March 16, 2017

A recent opinion piece in The Japan Times predicts a "revolutionary disruption coming to the energy sector," and suggests that using ammonia for energy storage will prove to be "a game-changer at least on the scale of the shale oil and gas revolution."

Article

Ammonia for energy storage: economic and technical analysis

Trevor Brown March 02, 2017

Developers around the world are looking at using ammonia as a form of energy storage, essentially turning an ammonia storage tank into a very large chemical battery. In the UK, Siemens is building an "all electric ammonia synthesis and energy storage system." In the Netherlands, Nuon is studying the feasibility of using Power-to-Ammonia "to convert high amounts of excess renewable power into ammonia, store it and burn it when renewable power supply is insufficient." While results from Siemens could be available in 2018, it might be 2021 before we see results from Nuon, whose "demonstration facility is planned to be completed in five years." But, while we wait for these real-world industrial data, the academic literature has just been updated with a significant new study on the design and performance of a grid-scale ammonia energy storage system.

Article

TU Delft’s Battery-Electrolyzer Technology

Stephen H. Crolius January 13, 2017

On December 14, the journal Energy & Environmental Science published an article on a new technology, “Efficient electricity storage with a battolyser, an integrated Ni–Fe battery and electrolyser.” The lead author is Fokko Mulder, Professor of Materials for Energy Conversion & Storage at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands. The system developed by Mulder and his collaborators accepts electricity from an external source and stores it in the conventional manner of all batteries. The twist is that when the battery is fully charged, any additional incoming electricity is used to generate hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis. The technology may prove to be a valuable element in a grid-scale ammonia-based energy system.

Article

ARPA-E's vision for carbon neutral liquid fuels

Trevor Brown January 11, 2017

We wrote last month about the US Department of Energy funding ammonia fuel projects through ARPA-E's "REFUEL" program ("Renewable Energy to Fuels through Utilization of Energy-dense Liquids"). Although we introduced the funded projects in both the ammonia synthesis category and the ammonia fuel-use category, the REFUEL project merits further analysis as a whole because it describes a roadmap for the development of ammonia fuel systems, and identifies benchmarks for their commercial success.

Article

Nuon's Power-to-Ammonia update, and the first European ammonia fuel conference in 2017

Trevor Brown December 02, 2016

An article in the latest issue of Dutch-language magazine NPT Proces Technologie provides a detailed update on the Nuon project, about which we wrote a few months ago. Nuon's Power-to-Ammonia project looks at grid-scale storage of "seasonal surplus" electricity from wind and solar in the form of ammonia. Proton Ventures, the originators of the Power-to-Ammonia concept in The Netherlands, have also been sharing details of the project in recent conference presentations - and announced that they will be hosting the first European ammonia fuel conference, in Rotterdam, in May 2017.

Article

Low-carbon ammonia synthesis: Japan's 'Energy Carriers'

Trevor Brown November 11, 2016

In 2018, a pilot plant in Japan will demonstrate a new way to produce ammonia at industrial-scale, with a low carbon footprint. This is part of Japan's 'Energy Carriers' R&D initiative, which aims to develop technologies to enable the nation's transition to a carbon-free hydrogen economy. The scope of the program covers ten subjects that encompass the full "CO2-free hydrogen value chain." Three of these ten programs describe a technology pathway for making low-carbon ammonia.