RheEnergise has raised enough investment via Crowdcube – £320k – to finance building a 500kW test rig for its ‘High-Density Hydro’ energy storage solution. The R&D work to date has been part-funded by Innovate UK, an arm of the UK Government (eight grants totalling £550,000 to December 2020 and a further on-going grant of £135,000).
The technology mimics a hydro pumped storage plant, which shifts water between a higher and lower reservoir depending on whether the system requires power to be imported or exported. But because it uses a proprietary fluid 2½ times denser than water, it can use buried storage tanks that require accordingly less volume and less height for the upper tank.
The test rig is expected to be in Scotland. RheEnergise said it is aiming to have its first commercial system operating in 2024 and over 100 systems within the next decade.
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