Applicants have until Friday this week to enter BEIS’s competition to win funding to develop new storage options that can deliver units sized at tens of MW.
BEIS is looking for “innovative, replicable” solutions that could offer an alternative to existing commercial large-scale energy storage technologies such as pumped hydro or batteries (such as lithium ion, lead acid or sodium-sulphur). It says it is looking for a target minimum output power of 30MW or minimum capacity of 50MWh for electrical energy storage technologies are within scope. It will also consider ‘power-to-X’ technologies, such as power-to-gas, with a target minimum input power of 5MW.
Up to £20 million will be available from 2019 to 2021. The competition will support up to three demonstration projects, which have to be built by March 2021 and complete operational testing by December 2021.
Projects should be at a technology readiness level of 6 or above, which could result in lower capital or operating costs to the traditional storage technologies, or improved capacity, sustainability and response rates at a comparable cost.