Mining giant Rio Tinto has played a key role in a major fund raising for what will be the world’s biggest liquid air energy storage plant in the UK, and has its eyes firmly on the Australian renewable transition and its need for long duration storage.
The £300 million funding round will support Highview Power’s first big project – a 50 MW, 300 MWh (six hour) facility in Carrington, Manchester. The funding was backed by UK energy services company Centrica and the UK Infrastructure Bank and a syndicate of investors including Rio, Goldman Sachs, and Mosaic Capital.
Liquid air storage is technology that uses power to compress and refrigerate air, turning it into a liquid for storage. When needed, the liquid air can then be expanded into a gas that can then be used to generate power. Highview says it will be suitable for storage from six hours to several weeks.
Rio’s interest in the technology is interesting because it is looking at transitioning the power source of its own portfolio of smelters and refineries in Australia and elsewhere from its current dependence on coal to wind and solar. Storage and dispatchable energy will be a key for those plans.
Already, Rio Tinto has signed agreements that will support two gigawatt scale wind and solar projects that will help power its Boyne Island smelter in Queensland, and a neighbouring refinery, and it has also launched tenders to the same in NSW where it is the major shareholder in the Tomago smelter.
“We believe long duration energy storage can play a critical role in firming renewable energy sources,” said Rio Tinto chief scientist Nigel Steward in a statement supporting the Highview investment.
“The investment from us and other partners marks a significant step in helping to build a greener, more resilient and more stable energy infrastructure for generations to come in the UK and beyond.”
Highview Power, which has been working on the technology for 16 years, says it will begun construction at the Manchester project immediately, and expects it will be fully operational in less than two years.
It is already sizing up opportunities in Australia, particularly in the Northern Territory where it says it has started development planning for a nominal 90 MW, 10 hour project on the the Katherine-Darwin grid, and a 30 MW, 12 hour facility in Alice Springs, next to the Owen Springs gas fired power station.
It says both projects would blend solar power and Lithium-ion storage in order to provide a base load supply of renewable energy. In the NT, several grid-scale solar plants have been built, but have been sitting idle for years because of changes to the grid dispatch system that effectively requires them to be backed by storage.
Highview also says it has been in discussions with Australian companies on a number of onshore wind projects. It recently signed a collaboration deal with Danish offshore wind developer Ørsted.
Highview says it plans another four large scale 2.5 GWh facilities in the UK, representing a total investment of £3 billion, that it hopes to roll out by 2035.
Centrica has invested £70 million to help accurate the roll out of the technology. The UKIB is similar to Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation and helps support first-of-a-kind technologies.
“There is no energy transition without storage,” Highview Power CEO Richard Butland said in a statement. “The UK’s investment in world-leading offshore wind and renewables requires a national long duration energy storage programme to capture excess wind and support the grids transformation.
“Our first project in Carrington will be the foundation for our full scale roll-out in the UK and expansion with partners to share this British technology internationally.”
Julian Leslie, the director and chief engineer of National Grid ESO, the market operator in the UK, said 4GW of liquid air storage will be required over the coming decades to support the transition to a 100 per cent zero carbon electricity system.”
