Highview Power also announced it has won the 2019 Ashden Award for Energy Innovation with its proprietary CRYOBattery technology.
“We are thrilled to receive such a prestigious award. The Ashden Awards put finalists through a very rigorous selection process—they want to ensure that they are awarding companies that are truly making a difference in solving the energy and sustainability challenges of today and tomorrow,” said Highview Power’s president and CEO, Javier Cavada. “We are honored that our CRYOBattery has proven to be such a technology.”
The company’s cryogenic energy storage technology, which uses liquid air as the storage medium, provides all the services essential for a robust grid including time shifting, synchronous voltage support, frequency regulation and reserves, synchronous inertia, and black start capabilities. Highview Power’s CRYOBattery can be sited almost anywhere. The CRYOBattery has a small footprint, even at multiple gigawatt-levels, and does not use hazardous materials.
“This is a pivotal moment for the renewable energy industry and for anyone who wants to deploy large amounts of renewables,” said Cavada. “As more and more renewables are added to the grid, long-duration, giga-scale energy storage is the necessary foundation to make these intermittent sources of power reliable enough to become baseload. Not only does our CRYOBattery deliver this reliability and allow scalability—it is proven, cost-effective, and available today.”
Cavada added Highview Power’s CRYOBattery can enable grid operators to maximize renewable penetration without needing fossil fuel generation to make up for intermittency. “This makes replacing gas peaker power plants with a combination of solar, wind, and energy storage a viable reality and truly sets the stage for a future where 100 percent of the world’s electricity comes from clean energy sources,” he said.
Over the last 15 years, Highview Power—through the design, construction, and operation of its CRYOBattery technology—has developed and optimized its own proprietary BLU™ core controller system. The BLU controller enables a system to be configured to a particular application through the selection of individual operational modes. It also provides operation and performance monitoring feedback, ensuring a facility’s optimal efficiency. The system’s embedded flexibility further ensures that the controller has the built-in capacity to adapt as a facility’s demand varies with market development.
“After looking at a number of storage technologies, we came to the conclusion that Highview Power’s CRYOBattery is the ideal solution to deliver long-duration, large-scale storage services to our customers. The technology is not only cost-effective—it is scalable, clean, has a long lifespan, and can be deployed now,” said Joaquín García Rico, CEO of TSK, a leading global engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) company. Highview Power recently announced a joint venture with TSK to co-develop CRYOBattery projects in Spain, the Middle East, and South Africa.
