Unlocking the full potential of renewable energy with the Ocean Battery

Project Information

OCEANBATTERY

Grant agreement ID: 190140124

DOI

10.3030/190140124

Project closed

EC signature date 20 June 2023

Start date 1 July 2023

End date 30 June 2025

Funded under

• The European Innovation Council (EIC)

Total cost

€ 4 434 373,75

EU contribution

€ 2 499 999,00

Coordinated by

OCEAN GRAZER BV
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - OCEANBATTERY (Unlocking the full potential of renewable energy with the Ocean Battery)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

To achieve the EU's goal of net-zero carbon emissions, Europe is transitioning towards renewable power generation, with a target of at least 70% coming from wind and solar. To ensure stability, reliability, and affordability of the power system, an additional 600 GW of storage capacity is required throughout Europe by 2050. To reach the 600 GW target by 2050 a capacity extension of 14 GW per year is planned over the next nine years as a result in the period 2030 – 2050 an expansion of 23 GW/year is needed. The current deployment rate is approximately 1 GW/year and hence dragging significantly behind.

The utility scale storage market is dominated by Pumped Hydro Storage systems and provides about 95% of the global capacity. The combination of the low cost level in combination with the unprecedented storage capacity and lifetime of these systems makes it choice number one in the market. In Europe there is room for another 200 GW of Pumped Hydro Storage systems in the mountains that is societally acceptable as such systems have a huge impact on the local environment.

To meet cover the remaining 400 GW energy storage implementation gap additional scalable long lasting storage solutions are needed. As there is no commercial storage solution available for the offshore domain the Ocean Battery was originally targeted at this market to fill in this void in the energy storage solution space.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The current Ocean Battery 2.0 design, developed in this project, resulted in a solution that can be installed inshore, near shore and offshore as well. Hence the Ocean Battery is no longer bound to the offshore space but now provide Location Independent underground Pumped Hydro Energy Storage and breaks the mold of mountain bound conventional PHS solutions. As a result the total addressable market has grown from 15 GW to at least 200 GW in Europe alone. The challenge of this project is to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of underground PHS by demonstration in an sand excavation lake.

A consortium of European partners has been formed that jointly construct Ocean Battery systems based on existing technologies. The resulting novel storage solution inherits the unrivaled specifications of conventional PHS and allows deployment anywhere such that power can be stored at the source of generation.

The dynamics of the Ocean Battery are reflected in the digital twin developed in this project. that models the behavior from water to wire and from wire to energy market. Based on the current cost model that has been developed in close collaboration with all the partners results in positive business cases independent if the system is deployed as stand-alone system directly connected to the power grid and markets as well as in situation where the system is deployed in combination with local renewable power generation from wind, solar or tidal energy and/or local demand from an industry or electrolyzer.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The renewed Ocean Battery can now be deployed at any location. Hence the design makes PHS applicable anywhere outside the mountains. The mechanical nature of PHS systems ensures a very long lifetime of such systems at very limited maintenance costs. Moreover, they can provide an almost infinite amount of storage cycles that will become crucial to balance out fluctuations in the renewable power generation especially when the share of renewables in the power mix keeps growing. The Ocean Battery can provide very fast reaction times on sub second level and support the primary and secondary reserves. At the same time the storage depth can extended anywhere beyond a storage depth of 4 – 8 hours that limits most electrochemical battery systems. For the Ocean Battery the storage depth will be determined by the business case and dictate the desired utilization rate of the energy storage capacity without any technical limitations.

Current state-of-the-art models of conventional PHS generally do not exceed to water to wire chain. Ocean Grazers digital twin not only includes the wire-to-market chain as well. It is based on the structural design of the system, that is intertwined with a detailed 3D fluid dynamics model and advanced 1D system dynamics model. On top the digital twin integrates our energy market simulator, cost and LCA-model in one simulation environment. It allows to fast adjustment to optimize the design and evaluate the physical behavior of and performance of the system but it also provides direct insight into the corresponding business case and environmental impact.

To prepare for expansion collaboration has been initiated to develop the proper business & revenue models for the US markets. That insight will be crucial to attract investment for deployment abroad as revenues significantly deviate from the European markets. At the same time it supports business development by assessment of specific implementation cases as reference projects.

To ensure the attractiveness of the Ocean Battery proposition for investors IP protection is key. The Ocean Battery was already protect by two patents, but meanwhile the third patent application has been accepted as well. To strengthen the IP-position further a fourth patent application has been initiated.

Near shore implementation of the Ocean Battery