Hydrostor, a Canadian, privately-held company, has invented a new way of storing the renewable energy: Underwater balloons. This could reduce the need for diesel or gas as a backup source of power.
Highlights:
- The solution can last longer than the best batteries at a lower cost.
- The material used for the underwater balloon is accumulators, which is used to raise the sunken ship from the Ocean floor.
- Hydrostor’s proprietary technology converts the excess energy into compressed air.
- Also, the heat generated by the process is stored through heat exchangers.
- The natural pressure of the lake is used to pump the air back to land, driving a turbine and generating electricity as it goes.
- The balloons are capable of providing powers to nearly 330 homes, and it can be easily scaled up.
Hydrostor CEO Curtis VanWalleghem said, “It’s finding places to store the air that’s been the problem [and] why it hasn’t been massively adopted. We open it up to thousands more sites because we use hydrostatic water pressure.”
“We’re now focused on commercialising this technology globally to bring our green energy storage solution to countries around the world. The G20 is talking about getting off fossil fuel by 2050. To do that, our electricity system has to incorporate storage, so we don’t need as much backup diesel and natural gas capacity – that’s what this can do.”
Source: Hydrostor
