Hydrostor Inc., a leader in Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES), is pleased to announce that its subsidiary, Hydrostor Australia Pty Ltd, has been awarded a combined total of $9 million of grant funding for Australia's first A-CAES project, to be sited at a mine outside of Adelaide—the Angas Zinc Mine. The project represents a key milestone in the advancement of Hydrostor's global pipeline of utility-scale energy storage projects.

The innovative 5 MW Angas A-CAES Project will be dispatched into Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) to provide synchronous inertia, load shifting and frequency regulation, supporting grid security and reliability. Hydrostor's facility will also enable the integration of variable renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind.  

By selecting the Angas Zinc Mine, currently in care and maintenance, the project will repurpose existing underground mining infrastructure as the A-CAES system's sub-surface air storage cavern, benefiting both the electricity grid in South Australia and the local community by converting an unused brownfield site into a clean energy project that drives economic development.

The technology works by using electricity from the grid to run a compressor, producing heated compressed air. Heat is extracted from the air stream and stored inside a proprietary thermal store preserving the energy for use later in the cycle. Compressed air is then stored in a purpose-built underground cavern, which is kept at a constant pressure using hydrostatic head from a water column. During charging, compressed air displaces water out of the cavern up a water column to a surface reservoir, and during discharge water flows back into the cavern forcing air to the surface under pressure where it is re-heated using the stored heat and then expanded through a turbine to generate electricity on demand. An animation describing A-CAES is available at www.hydrostor.ca.

The project has been awarded a grant of $6 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) as part of its Advancing Renewables Program. ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the pilot project could open up a new form of renewable energy storage in Australia, which helps to support ARENA's investment in delivering security and reliable electricity.

"Compressed air storage has the potential to provide similar benefits to pumped hydro energy storage, however it has the added benefits of being flexible with location and topography, such as utilising a cavern already created at a disused mine site," Mr Miller said.

The ARENA grant complements the Government of South Australia's award of a $3 million grant in support of the project through its Renewable Technology Fund. "Hydrostor's interest in establishing this Australian-first project at the Angas mine site highlights the State and Federal Governments' commitment to make our renewable energy deliver more for consumers,' said Minister van Holst Pellekaan.

The successful deployment of A-CAES at the Angas Zinc Mine will open up opportunities globally for the build-out of full-scale (50+ MW), long duration (4-24+ hours), long life (50+ years) projects. The project serves as a global example for A-CAES demonstration that is directly providing a full suite of services to a sophisticated organized power market that is experiencing significant penetrations of asynchronous generation (such as solar and wind), a challenge that a growing number of power systems face around the world. Hydrostor's emission-free solution can be flexibly located where required on the grid, is deployable at both greenfield and brownfield sites, and offers a compelling, low-cost alternative to geographically-constrained bulk energy storage technologies such as pumped hydro.   

"Hydrostor is very appreciative of the contributions from ARENA and the Government of South Australia for its first Australian A-CAES project. We're excited to have the opportunity to demonstrate the significant benefits of our technology in Australia, serving as an important example of A-CAES on the global stage and enabling the build-out of Hydrostor's full-scale project pipeline in Australia, the United States, Canada and other markets." said Curtis VanWalleghem, Hydrostor's CEO.

About Hydrostor

Hydrostor, a private company founded in 2010 and based in Toronto, Canada is a leader in Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES), a technology uniquely suited to enable the transition to a cleaner, more reliable electricity grid. A-CAES provides grid services that are not readily replicated by other storage technologies, giving it unique market potential. It flexibly addresses bulk electricity system needs for dispatchable capacity such as peaker plant applications, true synchronous rotational inertia for grid security and ancillary services, renewable integration and optimization, transmission deferral, as well as behind-the-meter or remote applications for mines and large industrial operations. Hydrostor's low-cost, emission free solution delivers long duration bulk energy storage that can be flexibly-located where required on the grid. The technology can also replace retired fossil fuel plants and leverage existing mining infrastructure, modernizing these assets as part of the green energy economy. Hydrostor has multiple projects in operation or under construction in Australia and Canada, as well as numerous projects in advanced development globally. Learn more at hydrostor.ca.