Javier Cavada

Dubai, UAE, 15 May 2019: Middle East countries with a growing solar and wind fleet, along with countries that need to strengthen the grid and improve security of supply, are the two main categories of customers that could greatly benefit from Highview Power’s cryogenic systems, said Javier Cavada, CEO. He added: “In areas with very good sun resources, such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, and UAE, we see our technology being used to support ‘load shifting’ – providing the ability to capture solar power during the day and store and use it during the night hours. That enables base load renewable generation.”

For the second category, Cavada said that he believes countries like Jordan and Lebanon would benefit from reactive power supply to the grid as well as traditional energy storage. In view of the growing importance the region is placing on District Cooling, Cavada said that the technology has potential in residential agglomerations, where it is possible to connect a storage facility to residential areas that could use low potential cold from the cold storage. Cold captured during the gasification stage, he said, can be distributed to residential compounds to improve efficiency of the air conditioning process.

Elaborating further on applications for District Cooling, Cavada explained that Highview Power’s CRYOBattery technology, in its standard configuration, recycles all heat and cold generated within the process to optimise the cycle’s efficiency, as well as maintain certain components at operational temperatures to maximise flexibility and response. He said, “There is some potential for our systems to provide additional cooling to adjacent systems, such as cooling networks, should the operator deem this as greater value, as removing cold from the process will have an impact on the overall round-trip efficiency (RTE) of the energy storage cycle.” Cavada emphasised that the level of impact depends on the amount of cold removed. “The more cold that is removed the lower the storage cycle RTE, and the perceived value of this cold to the cooling network,” he said. Thus, Cavada stressed, a holistic assessment of the specific project economics is required, starting with the size of core energy storage system required to support the energy network and its minimum performance.

With technology surrounding energy storage continuously evolving, Cavada said that growing production volumes will improve the economics of energy storage and drive its adoption. “Even at today’s project financial parameters, hybrid solutions, like Solar-PV, plus Highview’s CRYOBattery, are very competitive and help promote the ‘baseload renewables’ concept,” he said. Cavada added that the solution also becomes very competitive for long duration of storage, such as for those exceeding four hours, and offers the most reasonable project economics owing to low levelised cost of electricity storage (LCOS) coupled with System Support benefits. “Two key long-term benefits are almost no degradation over time and the ability to easily utilise all the materials after decommissioning, since the CRYOBattery uses benign materials,” he added.

Multiple sectors, Cavado emphasised, will greatly benefit from deploying the solution. “Electrical system operators benefit through network management and provision of Black Start service,” he said. “Market regulators benefit through enablement of increased capacity of renewables on the grid. And remote location consumers, such as hospitals and water treatment plants benefit through energy security assurance and building baseload renewable hybrid configurations.” Cavado emphasised that Highview Power brings to the table the technical knowledge necessary for efficient integration, as the company leverages its experience designing and operating Cryogenic Energy Systems (CES) over the past of 10 years by developing a proprietary control system, which encapsulates that knowledge and experience in a bid to guarantee performance and flexibility standards.