What is being billed as the world’s largest project of its kind is going to be built to store energy in in Utah.
Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems and Magnum Development announced the initiative to launch the Advanced Clean Energy Storage project in the central part of the state. The initiative will develop 1,000 megawatts of 100 percent clean energy storage.
The companies say they will use technologies and strategies in working for a decarbonized future for the power grid of the Western United States.
Mitsubishi has developed gas turbine technology that enables a mixture of renewable hydrogen and natural gas to produce power with lower carbon emissions. The company hopes to use 100 percent renewable hydrogen as a fuel source which could allow gas turbines to produce electricity with zero carbon emissions.
Magnum Development’s role is the use of its five salt caverns where it stores liquid fuels. The company is continuing to develop Compressed Air Energy Storage and renewable hydrogen storage operations.
In many parts of the western United States, there are times of day when demand for electricity is lower than the production of renewable power. This leads to curtailment of renewable generation and negative electricity pricing. Continued deployment of renewables will require that excess power be stored for later use. To serve the needs of the entire western United States, many gigawatt-hours of storage capacity are required.
Initially developing enough energy storage to completely serve the needs of 150,000 households for an entire year, the ACES initiative will deploy four types of clean energy storage at utility scale. These energy storage technologies include:
- Renewable hydrogen
- Compressed Air Energy Storage
- Large scale flow batteries
- Solid oxide fuel cells
“The technologies we are deploying will store electricity on time scales from seconds to seasons of the year,” said Paul Browning, President and CEO of MHPS Americas. “For example, when we add gas turbines powered with renewable hydrogen to a hydrogen storage salt-dome, we have a solution that stores and generates electricity with zero carbon emissions.”
