British company introduces waterless pumped storage hydropower technology

A UK-based company has developed a waterless pumped storage hydropower technology, and recently teamed up to deliver 100MW energy storage capacity projects by 2030.

Furthermore, this technology works within the basic framework of pumped storage hydro, which currently accounts for 95% of the world’s energy storage capacity, but uses a new material called R-19 instead of water.

R-19 is 2.5 times denser than water, which reduces the amount of height and volume needed by about 40%. The material’s composition has not yet been made public, but it is claimed to be very cheap and environmentally neutral.

Such projects will be capable of achieving 5MW to 100MW storage capacity, while about 6,500 possible locations for deployment have been identified in the UK.

Last November, the company was awarded a £8.25m grant from the UK government to develop a 250kW demonstration project within a mine in Devon.

The new partnership with another UK organization involves the development of 100MW worth of such energy storage projects by 2030.

It is worth mentioning that the European Union requires 200GW of energy storage to become available by 2030 and 600GW by 2050.

This technology aims to pump up the fluid when renewable energy production is available in abundance and then release it and create electricity when needed.