Enervenue, US supplier of metal hydrogen energy storage systems and RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerk), the German-owned global electricity producer, have made a purchase agreement concerning a pilot project in RWE’s Milwaukee-area testing facility.
The deal includes delivery of Energy Storage Vessels (ESVs) for storage of renewable energy for an undisclosed sum.
“Grid-scale energy storages that promise to be safer, flexible and more durable offer great potential for meeting our continuously growing demand for energy,” said Andrea Hu-Bianco, SVP of Engineering, RWE Clean Energy. “We look forward to assessing the performance of EnerVenue’s metal-hydrogen technology as part of our pilot programme that acts as our innovation incubator to test lithium and beyond-lithium battery technology, power conversion system and controls.”
Based on proven technology used by NASA for more than 30 years, ESVs feature “an exceptionally long” lifespan, eliminating the need for augmentation or oversizing, EnerVenue claims.
They can be easily mounted in racks, containers or stacked in custom warehousing. There is no risk of thermal runaway and the chemistry eliminates the need for preventative fire suppression. ESVs can also reliably operate in a wide ambient temperature range without supplementary HVAC.
Enervenue said the vessels dramatically reduce OPEX and feature a much lower cost-per-cycle compared to lithium-ion chemistries, due to the 30,000 charging/discharging cycles offered, corresponding to three daily cycles for 30 years.
RWE develops, builds and operates battery storage systems in the US, Europe and Australia. It plans to expand its battery storage capacity to 6GW worldwide by 2030.
