Israeli company Brenmiller Energy has announced the opening of the thermal energy storage gigafactory bGEN in the Negev desert near the city of Dimoni.
The project is due to reach full capacity of 4 GWh per year by the end of 2023 and could potentially power 3 million households, Freethink said.
The material explained that "green" energy will be stored in the form of heat and transmitted to users with the help of steam. After all, the generation of wind and solar energy depends on weather conditions.
Brenmiller hopes that the new facility will become a major production center.
"We know a thing or two about using heat, and we're ready to share that knowledge with the world," said company founder and CEO Avi Brenmiller.
It is noted that bGEN can be charged from green energy when there is an excess of it in the network, as well as from industrial exhaust gases and other sources of heat or electricity. This energy is stored in a storage device - crushed stone desert, where the temperature can reach 750°C. The water passing through the system is heated and turned into steam, which can then be used on demand.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that the Swiss startup Energy Vault plans to complete the construction of two gravity batteries in June 2023. They will be able to accumulate green energy with a round-trip efficiency of more than 80% with minimal auxiliary consumption.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, a sand battery of the Polar Night Energy company was put into operation in Finland at the Vatayankoski power plant, which stores 8 MWh of thermal energy. In November 2022, it began to give off heat for heating and water heating.
