Heat Bat­tery – Uti­liza­tion of indus­tri­al side streams for sus­tain­able ener­gy stor­age

Ener­gy stor­age is one of the key ele­ments as well as one of the most chal­leng­ing prob­lems of the green tran­si­tion. Vari­able renew­able ener­gy sources (VRES) such as wind and solar pow­er are inter­mit­tent and non-dis­patch­able, which has led to an increased need for stor­age tech­nolo­gies. There­fore, sus­tain­able, scal­able and inex­pen­sive ener­gy stor­age solu­tions need to be imple­ment­ed, to cap­ture and store excess ener­gy dur­ing high VRES out­put. This helps bal­anc­ing sup­ply and demand and enhances the uti­liza­tion of renew­able ener­gy resources.

The Läm­pöakku (Heat Bat­tery) project aims at devel­op­ing ener­gy effi­cient, prof­itable, mod­u­lar, scal­able, and sus­tain­able ener­gy stor­age tech­nol­o­gy based on heat­ing of inor­gan­ic mate­ri­als from sec­ondary sources. In the Heat Bat­tery con­cept, the excess elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by VRES can be stored as high tem­per­a­ture ther­mal ener­gy (>500°C), to be used lat­er for heat­ing of solids and gas­es as well as for pro­duc­tion of steam in indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions on-demand. Addi­tion­al­ly, the ther­mal ener­gy can be used as heat source for dis­trict heat­ing or for heat­ing of hous­es and com­mer­cial green­hous­es, as well.

The Heat Bat­tery con­cept gen­er­ates options for cre­at­ing new busi­ness­es and jobs relat­ed to the con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of heat bat­ter­ies as well as for the gen­er­a­tion of ther­mal ener­gy for the cus­tomers. Addi­tion­al­ly, the heat bat­tery enables the ener­gy sec­tor to cap­ture excess VRES gen­er­a­tion, which will also help reduc­ing elec­tric­i­ty price volatil­i­ty. As the Heat Bat­tery is based on indus­tri­al side stream mate­ri­als, this con­cept will also enhance the inte­gra­tion of the ener­gy indus­try and the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my.

In this joint project of Uni­ver­si­ty of Oulu and Oulu Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, the char­ac­ter­is­tics and ther­mal prop­er­ties of indus­tri­al side prod­ucts will be stud­ied in detail. The oper­a­tion of the Heat Bat­tery will be mod­elled at dif­fer­ent lev­els, i.e., at the lev­el of a piece of mate­r­i­al, at the bat­tery lev­el and at the sys­temic lev­el of the ener­gy pro­duc­tion net­work.

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The project is co-fund­ed by the Euro­pean Union.