Two dozen hopeful ventures in energy storage are to benefit from competition prizes worth £6.7 million.
Energy ministry D-BEIS confirmed the wins yesterday across competing technologies, funded out of the department’s £68 million Longer Duration Energy Storage (LDES) programme.
The scheme helps innovators prep their brainwaves for commercial exploitation, at the same time as it raises their idea’s profile to investment ‘angels’.
Hydrogens both green and blue, chemical heat and lowering weights from great heights all feature in today’s list. The winners include:
- Cheesecake Energy’s FlexiTanker. The Nottingham concern will receive £139,411 to develop its thermal and compressed air energy storage technology.
- B9 Energy Storage’s Ballylumford Power-to-X project in Northern Ireland celebrates nearly £1 million to mobilise the development of 20MW of storage, which will see green hydrogen stored in underground salt caverns.
- Sunamp’s EXTEND project in East Lothian receives £150k for a feasibility study into the use of heat batteries alongside home energy systems
- Gravitricity, Leith-based mass-and-shaft pioneers – pictured -, secure over £900k, allowing the firm to advance with development plans for its 4MWh first-of-a kind UK pilot.
Greg Hands, D-BEIS’s energy and climate change minister, commended these and other early-stage winners. “Driving forward energy storage technologies will be vital in Britain’s transition towards cheap, clean and secure renewable energy,” the minister said.
