Heat batteries store

If you are in Zagreb, Croatia, and you drive along Ilica street from west to east, when you reach Črnomerec, on the left, on the facade of a building, you will notice a large sign that says “Ciglane Zagreb”. Production at the brickworks has long ceased, the company formally ceased to exist in 2011, and since then it has only been mentioned in stories about times gone by. Find out why I am writing this in the post below.

Thermal batteries could transform renewable energy storage and provide a cheaper, more scalable alternative to lithium-ion technology. We need heat to make everything from steel bars to ketchup packets. Today, a whopping 20% of global energy demand goes to producing heat used in industry, and most of that heat is generated by burning fossil fuels. To clean up the industry, many companies are working to supply that heat with thermal batteries.

Storing energy as heat isn’t a new idea—steelmakers have been capturing waste heat and using it to reduce fuel demand for nearly 200 years. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar have seen prices fall dramatically in the past decade. However, these power sources are inconsistent, and subject to daily and seasonal patterns. So with the rise in cheap renewable energy has come a parallel push to find ways to store it for applications that require a consistent power source. Heat batteries are a fundamentally new way of storing energy at a small fraction of the cost. 

Heat batteries store excess electricity as heat in materials like bricks or graphite, which can reach temperatures over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The stored heat can then be released when needed, making thermal batteries ideal for powering the manufacturing of steel, cement, and chemicals. What a thermal battery does is allow you to soak up clean, inexpensive electrons from wind and solar, store them as heat and deliver that energy later to an industrial customer.

Rondo Energy, (not Ciglane Zagreb) which turns bricks into batteries, wins fresh funding.

Rondo Energy is one of the leaders in this space. The company built its first commercial heat battery in California’s Central Valley at Calgren Renewable Fuels. The system stores solar energy during the day and delivers high-temperature heat 24/7. A pound of brick stores more energy than a pound of lithium-ion battery, at less than 10% of the cost. By 2027, Rondo Energy plans to expand production to 90 gigawatt-hours annually, a scale that could cut 12 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. That’s the equivalent of taking 4 million gas cars off the road, according to the company.

With industrial heat demand expected to continue growing this decade, there’s an urgent need to find cleaner options. Thermal batteries could be a key strategy for keeping factories running as efforts to cut their emissions warm up. Thermal energy storage could connect cheap but intermittent renewable electricity with heat-hungry industrial processes. These systems can transform electricity into heat and then, like typical batteries, store the energy and dispatch it as needed. Despite their promise, thermal batteries face hurdles, including high upfront investment and a lack of familiarity among industrial users. The biggest hurdle is educating the market that this technology is available.

PS. Možda na Grgasu ponovo započnemo kopati.