Minto Project Team Developer/Owner: NRStor Technology manufacturer/EPCM: Temporal Power Project management: HH Angus (Angus Power) Quality assurance: S&C Electric Co. System operator/Offtake: IESO Utility: Westario Power
Hello, Earthlings! This is our weekly newsletter on all things environmental, where we highlight trends and solutions that are moving us to a more sustainable world. (Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.)
Last week, we looked at some of the hydro- and gravity-based energy storage technologies being explored, along with batteries, in order to integrate wind and solar power more effectively into the grid. That's because clean energy isn't necessarily generated at the times when people use the most power, and often needs to be saved for later.
Here are some other energy storage technologies that have been tested in Canada in recent years or are being tested and used right now.
Compressed air energy storage
This is similar to pumped hydro, except that it involves using surplus power to compress and pump air instead of water into a space such as a cave or mine shaft. The air is later released to drive a turbine.
The first commercial installation of this kind was built in salt caves in Germany in 1978, and it's still operating.
In Canada, Toronto-based Hydrostor built two demonstration plants:
A plant in a former salt mine in Goderich, Ont., billed as the world's first emission-free compressed air facility. It can feed 10 megawatts of power into the grid for up to five hours.
A smaller demonstration that stored the air in balloons 55 metres below the surface of Lake Ontario.
Flywheels (or rotors) spin at very high rates (up to 50,000 revolutions per minute), typically in a vacuum so air friction doesn't slow them down. Power is stored as kinetic energy by using a motor to accelerate the flywheels, and energy can be discharged by reversing the process so the flywheel drives a motor or some other electrical generation device.
In Canada, Toronto-based NRStor has a flywheel storage facility that has operated in Minto, Ont., since 2014, and recently bought a second flywheel storage project in Clear Creek, Ont.
A flywheel is used by Montreal-based Tugliq Energy Co. to manage variations in wind power at Glencore's Raglan Mine Renewable Electricity Smart-Grid Pilot Demonstration Project in northern Quebec. (In the image above, it's located in the dark buildings at the back left.)
Energy can be stored by heating or cooling materials such as rocks, salts or liquids and keeping them insulated to prevent the energy from escaping as heat. Later, the heat can be used to produce steam to turn turbines and generate electricity, or can be used directly for heating and cooling.
Fredericton-based Stash Energy's system was first tested in Summerside, P.E.I., a few years ago. It's a heat pump that stores heat in what the company describes as a chemical. The heat can be released to warm homes during the day.
The Toronto Zoo ran a test of California-based Ice Energy's Ice Bear system, which freezes water into ice at night during the summer. It slowly melts during the day to cool the air at the zoo's Caribou Café. However, Ice Energy filed for bankruptcy in December 2019.
One other way to store energy is to use electricity to generate hydrogen from water using an electrolyzer. The energy can be released later by feeding the hydrogen into a fuel cell, which operates much like a battery. It's only 25 to 45 per cent efficient, which is much less than most other energy storage methods, but it is reliable, quiet and takes up little space.
The Markham Power-to-Gas facility in the Toronto area, which was commissioned in 2018, is used to help balance electricity supply and demand in Ontario by converting electricity to and from hydrogen.
Hydrogen systems have also been used at a number of projects across Canada in remote locations, including:
The Ramea Wind-Hydrogen-Diesel Project off Newfoundland.
The Hydrogen Assisted Renewable Power project in Bella Coola, B.C., run by Surrey, B.C.-based Powertech Labs, where hydrogen was used to store off-peak power generation from run-of-river hydro generation.
Glencore's Raglan Mine Renewable Electricity Smart-Grid Pilot Demonstration Project, where it's used for longer-term power storage. (In the photo above, it's the white tanks in the front.)
If you're interested in a more detailed look at energy storage projects in Canada, Prof. Ian Rowlands at the University of Waterloo has compiled a list here.
— Emily Chung
Following our article last week on gravity energy storage, a number of you wrote in about our inconsistent use of two units of measurement for power: watts and watt-hours. We agree this was confusing and, in one case, incorrect. (Energy Vault's demonstration is a 35 megawatt-hour plant, not a 35-megawatt plant.)
When it comes to energy storage, both units are important, says Prof. Jatin Nathwani, executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy at the University of Waterloo. That's because energy storage serves two functions: It can balance short-term fluctuations in the transmission grid on the scale of seconds or minutes, and it can store and release energy over many hours.
The specifications for a given project include both numbers. For example, Energy Vault says one of its units can have a storage capacity of 20 to 80 MWh, with the ability to provide continuous power of four to eight MW for eight to 16 hours.
There's also a radio show! Carbon offsets are billed as a necessary tool for climate action, but decades of projects have largely failed to reduce emissions. With a new Canadian system in the works, What on Earth looks at the problems with offsets and how we can make them work. Listen to What on Earth on CBC Radio One on Sunday at 12:30 p.m., 1 p.m. in Newfoundland, or any time on podcast or CBC Listen.
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