An Italian startup this month announced the successful launch of a CO2 battery that uses carbon dioxide to store renewable energy at utility-scale on the grid—a technology that is now ready to be deployed worldwide.
Energy Dome began its operations in February 2020 and has progressed from a concept to full testing of a multi-megawatt plant in just over two years.
At its first facility in Sardinia, Italy, operators completed trouble-shooting for the CO2 Battery technology and are now entering the commercial scaling phase, becoming the first commercial long-duration energy storage technology on the market offering “a reliable alternative to fossil fuels for dispatchable baseload power globally”.
The initial phase of operations has confirmed the performance of the CO2 Battery and its capability of storing energy for a long duration, all while maintaining highly competitive round-trip efficiency, without degradation or site dependency.
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The key to this Sardinia demonstration project has been the use of off-the-shelf equipment available from a globally established supply chain, demonstrating that the rapid global deployment of the CO2 Battery is now possible with no bottlenecks.
“I am proud of our dedicated team and of our results. We can now provide an answer to the most pressing issue of our time: climate change,” said Energy Dome Founder and CEO Claudio Spadacini.
“Our breakthrough technology, the CO2 Battery, is now commercially available to make cost-effective renewable energy dispatchable on a global scale.”
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Energy Dome’s CO2 Batteries can be quickly deployed anywhere in the world at less than half the cost of similar-sized lithium-ion battery storage facilities, and use readily available materials, such as carbon dioxide, steel, and water. They are now preparing for their first full-scale 20MW-200MWh plant, expected to be deployed by the end of 2023.
Spadacini has tapped a team of experts in turbomachinery, process engineering, and energy, with a proven track record of designing novel turbines. The unique nature of the Energy Dome process, which was named a winner in the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Pioneers 2022 technology competition, integrates known components in a novel industrial process based on a thermodynamic transformation of CO2.
The company has already secured multiple commercial agreements, including with an Italian utility A2A for the construction of a 20MW-5h facility. Earlier this year, Energy Dome also signed a non-exclusive license agreement with Ansaldo Energia, a major provider of power generation plants and components, to build long-duration energy storage projects in Italy, Germany, the Middle East and Africa.
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To fund a rapid commercial scale-up, the company, which also has an office in the UK, plans to launch its Series B fundraising round.
See an animation about how it works:
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