Enabling a zero-carbon grid with water, gravity and a circular approach to infrastructure.
Mine Storage: Revolutionizing Energy Transition with Innovative Storage Solutions
With a vision to enable the renewable energy transition, Mine Storage is a pure play impact company. Their solution ensures that fossil-dependent industries can electrify and enables resilient electrical systems with enough storage capacity to permit 100% fossil free power supply.
The urgent need to tackle climate change is putting added pressure on how quickly we can decarbonize our industries and energy systems. Electrification and renewable energy sources will be crucial part of the solution, but to be able to implement them whilst maintaining a stable and resilient electrical system, the renewables need to be supported by energy storage to help balance variations between electricity production and electricity consumption.
Several technologies are already being built at an accelerating rate to support the growing energy storage demand. Today, traditional pumped storage hydro (PSH) accounts for over 90% of all global energy storage. Unfortunately, traditional PSH are expensive, has significant environmental impact and takes a long time to realize. Alternatively, batteries, hydrogen and flexible demand response solutions will not be sufficient to enable the fast energy transition that is needed to reach our climate goals.
Mine Storage’s Eco-Friendly Approach to Large-Scale Energy Storage
The Swedish energy storage company Mine Storage wants to drive positive change in the energy industry. Their large-scale energy storage solution uses retired mines or quarries and turns them into circular energy storage facilities.
The environmental impact of a mine storage facility is minimal thanks to using already existing infrastructure in a closed loop system. Instead of retiring mines and quarries, Mine Storage leverages the height differences that can be found between the surrounding environment and, for example, a mine.
The technology is based on well-proven, state-of-the-art hydro power equipment whereby energy is stored by pumping water from the mine up to ground level and energy is released by letting the same water flow back into the mine via turbines that generate electricity. A mine storage can be emptied and filled several times per day and can both store electrical energy over time and supply the electrical grid with frequency regulation. In this way, it can become a valuable contribution with balancing services to the electricity grid as well as an opportunity to combine with both solar and wind power production in the immediate area.
Transforming Old Mines into Powerhouses of Energy Storage
Discontinued mines often hold large volumes of water and can have depths of several hundred meters, sometimes thousands. That is the basic prerequisites for PSH. There is no need to flood greenfield areas to build above ground PSH since there is over 1 million old mines that can be converted into mine storage sites.
Now the company Mine Storage plans to build mine storage facilities in Sweden, Finland, USA, Spain and Germany among other countries. They currently have a project pipeline consisting of over 1 GWh based on the energy storage capacity of a single charging cycle.
For more information on Mine Storage. Visit www.minestorage.com
Find out more about COP28 campaign
