Highview Power Gets £10 Mn Grant From UK Govt for 50 MW CRYOBattery

Highview Power has been awarded a GBP 10 million grant from the UK Department for BEIS for a 50 MW cryogenic energy storage (CRYOBattery) facility.

Highview Power, a global leader in long-duration energy storage solutions, has announced that it has been awarded a GBP 10 million grant from the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) for a 50 MW cryogenic energy storage facility (with a minimum of 250MWh), known as the CRYOBattery, to help the country achieve its decarbonisation goals.

Highview was the only electricity energy storage technology company recipient of the Storage at Scale Competition hosted by the UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Javier Cavada, Highview Power CEO, said, “This new cryogenic energy storage plant will deliver much needed long-duration energy storage and provide valuable services to the National Grid. We are delighted to have been chosen to assist the UK in achieving its goal of a 100 percent clean, carbon-free energy future.”

The firm has entered into a joint venture with Carlton Power, a UK independent power station developer, to build and operate the facility at Trafford Energy Park, just outside of Manchester. The facility, located in Carrington Village, will be one of Europe’s largest battery storage systems and will supply clean, reliable, and cost-efficient long-duration energy storage. In addition, it will provide grid services to help integrate renewable energy, stabilise the regional electrical grid, and ensure future energy security during blackouts and other disruptions. Highview and Carlton plan to co-develop up to four additional CRYOBattery projects in the UK, totalling over 1 GWh.

The firm recently received a GBP 35 million investment from Sumitomo Heavy Industries, part of which will be utilised for the development of this project.

“We are on a fast-track to developing our cryogenic energy storage systems around the globe, and this partnership will help accelerate momentum in the European markets,” added Cavada.

Construction of the facility at Trafford Park is expected to start later this year and enter commercial operation in 2022. It will use existing substation and transmission infrastructure, with its income derived from several markets, including arbitrage (buying electricity when prices are low and selling it when prices are high), grid balancing, and ancillary services such as frequency response and voltage support.

Energy and Clean Growth Minister Kwasi Kwarteng, said, “This revolutionary new CRYOBattery facility will form a key part of our push towards net zero, bringing greater flexibility to Britain’s electricity grid and creating green-collar jobs in Greater Manchester. Projects like these will help us realise the full value of our world-class renewables, ensuring homes and businesses can still be powered by green energy, even when the sun is not shining and the wind not blowing.”

As per the firm, its cryogenic energy storage systems, which use liquid air as the storage medium, are the only long-duration energy storage solution available today that are locatable and can offer multiple gigawatt-hours of storage. That represents weeks’ worth of storage, not just hours or days. 

Further adding that at giga-scale, CRYOBatteries paired with renewables are equivalent in performance to – and could replace – thermal and nuclear base-load power in addition to supporting electricity transmission and distribution systems while providing additional security of supply. At approximately GBP 110/MWh for a 10-hour, 200 MW / 2 GWh system, the CRYOBattery offers a competitive levelised cost of storage for large-scale applications.