Airengy has made a deal to deploy its long-duration energy storage technology in salt caverns in Romania.
Energy tech developer Airengy and real estate firm Hagag Europe have signed a co-development agreement for compressed air power plant (CAPP) projects in Romania, Airengy said.
The project will deploy Airengy’s AirBattery technology. This would be the largest facility to use the technology, because Airengy only has a 250 kW demonstration site in Israel.
“Phase 1 will have a power capacity greater than 1 MW and about 200 MWh of storage. While Airengy already operates a 250 kW facility, the MW scale threshold is important to qualify the technology for schemes such as the U.K LDES Cap-and-Floor mechanism,” according to the company.
Phase 2 of the agreement could surpass the currently largest compressed air energy storage plant in the world
Phase 2 will expand the discharge power to grid-scale size, providing about 25 MW, and to about 5 GWh of storage capacity, it added.
Of note, the world’s largest compressed air energy storage plant, with a capacity of 2.4 GWh, has come online in China in late January.
The firm noted that the Romanian deal comes after collaboration agreements in the UK and Germany. Of note, it has signed memoranda of understanding with German energy company SEFE, and the UK’s Kistos, a North Sea infrastructure and gas storage firm.
Airengy is based in Israel. Hagag Europe is a real estate company headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, but it is part of Hagag Group, also from Israel.
“Solution for multi-day long-duration, grid-scale dispatchable clean power”
The project in Romania aims to utilize existing salt caverns, left over from mining operations, as energy storage reservoirs.
Airengy explained that a compressed air power plant provides a unique renewable energy storage proposition. It delivers multi-day long-duration, grid-scale dispatchable clean power.
Such long-duration storage cannot be provided using common technologies, it claimed.
Transition from the proof-of-concept stage to commercialization
“The agreement with Hagag Europe marks our transition from the development and proof-of-concept stage to commercialization and the initiation of commercial-scale power plants based on our technology,” Airengy Chairman Yiftah Ron-Tal stressed.
According to Tzachi Hagag, Chairman of Hagag Europe, the use of natural geological formations such as salt caverns provides a substantial economic and operational advantage over existing storage solutions.
