Whitepaper: Thermal energy storage: The green solution to peaking power plants

The Need for Energy Storage in a Green Future

The world faces a crises in global climate change and an ever-increasing demand for energy. While the past century has seen great strides in renewable energy technology, there is still an enormous gap between supply and demand for renewables. That gap is currently filled with natural gas and nuclear plus a polluting and expensive supply of coal and diesel peaking plants.

The natural limitations of how renewable energy is harvested, and the patterns of human use, make closing that gap difficult. The worst of these problems occurs during so-called “on-peak” times when production of fossil fuel-burning plants is ramped up to meet demand. Increasingly, what is needed is a way to store energy created by renewables for use during peak times.

High-capacity batteries and flywheels are some of the technologies being explored for that purpose, but thermal energy storage is a particularly promising storage system that integrates with existing cooling systems, relieving a huge source of peak demand.