Patent granted for award-winning cold energy storage 03 February 2012

UK energy saving technology firm Highview Power Storage has been granted a patent for its new CryoEnergy System (CES) in both China and South Africa.

The company has built a pilot plant that demonstrates the practicality of its novel energy collecting system, which uses liquid air as the storage medium.

What's particularly clever is that the design uses mature process industry components and unchallenged supply chains, but with sophisticated integration that makes for impressive efficiency and footprint in energy storage, particularly for using alongside variable production renewable energy plants.

"With the pilot plant fully operational on the UK's national grid and as we move into advanced discussions around commercial deployment, the granting of patents in key markets is very timely," comments Highview Power Storage COO Toby Peters, one of the original inventors.

"We are confident it will be also granted in other regions as it goes through the examination process," he adds.

Peters points to the fact that the new Highview system can be scaled to deliver large-scale, long duration energy storage – typically 50MW and GWhs of storage. Additionally, it can simultaneously convert low grade waste heat to power with significantly more efficiency than current alternative technologies.

Highview's CES technology has five further patents pending covering various configurations of the system, and its design and integration with co-located processes as well as the use of low grade waste heat.

At the end of 2011, Highview won both the Award for Energy and Environment and the Grand Prix Prize (across all categories) at The Engineer 2011 Technology and Innovation Awards.

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Highview Power Storage

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