EnergyNest AS products

Steam Power Plants are critical elements of any network’s generation portfolio, but they are often punished for their inflexibility. With increased intermittent renewables, more volatility in the electricity markets, and increasing uncertainty in future revenues, steam power plants are turning to the thermal battery to render their fleets more responsive to an increasingly complex grid. The thermal battery gives steam power plants the capability of ramping up/down as fast as a battery, increasing its peak power output and enabling operation at lower load, without being limited by the boiler.

Open-cycle gas turbines and reciprocating engines are fast-starting, flexible power generators, but they emit large quantities of high-grade heat which is currently untapped.

Multiple elements are combined in a thermal battery module, which form the basic units that make up the thermal battery system. The modules are designed for easy transportation, on-site assembly and the majority of piping works to be prefabricated and pressure tested before installation.

Concentrated solar power plants currently rely on molten salt technology for storing thermal energy. But this is a complex and costly technology. EnergyNest offers promising solution for cost reduction. Parabolic trough plants operating with thermal oil (such as Dowtherm A and Therminol VP-1) will benefit from up to 60% lower CAPEX and up to 75% lower OPEX for their thermal storage system. EnergyNest also offers value that molten salt simply cannot provide – such as its ability to preheat the solar field and turbines, and its capacity to allow continuous plant operation (avoiding shutdown) in case of power block failure.

Energy Nest’s thermal energy storage is perfectly suited for industries operating processes at temperatures between 150°C and 400°C. The storage may be used for a range of applications -- including storage of recovered waste heat, benefiting from low-cost grid power to produce heat for later use, reducing the impacts of cyclic loads, and providing emergency storage.

Remote areas such as islands and off-grid mining sites with substantial renewable energy production will inevitably face occasional peaks of renewable power that cannot be directly consumed or traded. This excess energy must therefore either be stored or curtailed. EnergyNest offers a highly valuable storage solution when a local demand for thermal energy exists (whether for district heating, desalination or industrial process heat). In such cases, excess renewable energy may be stored as heat, and can be discharged to produce both heat and power, thereby maximizing the use of stored energy.