Thermal vitality storage might join low-cost however intermittent renewable electrical energy with heat-hungry industrial processes. These programs can rework electrical energy into warmth after which, like typical batteries, retailer the vitality and dispatch it as wanted.
Rondo Power is likely one of the firms working to provide and deploy thermal batteries. The corporate’s warmth storage system depends on a resistance heater, which transforms electrical energy into warmth utilizing the identical methodology as an area heater or toaster—however on a bigger scale, and reaching a a lot larger temperature. That warmth is then used to heat up fastidiously engineered and organized stacks of bricks, which retailer the warmth for later use. Air blown over the new bricks can then be used to generate steam, or delivered on to warmth up tools.
By utilizing widespread supplies and designing tools that may work with present services, Rondo is working to indicate that its know-how can combine right into a sector the place price is vital. “We’re proving that is economical proper now,” says John O’Donnell, the corporate’s CEO.
Rondo has been working its first business pilot at an ethanol plant in California since March 2023. The corporate can be scaling up, manufacturing tools in a manufacturing facility in Taiwan that it’s already introduced plans to broaden.
A not too long ago introduced venture with the beverage firm Diageo will see Rondo’s warmth batteries put in in a Kentucky whiskey distillery the place Bulleit bourbon is made, together with considered one of Diageo’s different services. In March, the venture received a lift from the US Division of Power, which chosen it to obtain $75 million in funding as half of a bigger push to wash up industrial emissions.
Rondo is much from the one contender within the thermal battery house, which now contains firms utilizing every thing from molten salt and metallic to crushed-up rocks to retailer warmth.
