European Commission announces 2.5M Euro for the BALANCE project

The European Commission has announced fund of 2.5M Euro for the BALANCE project . The BALANCE project aims to demonstrate a technology that enables flexible storage of large amount of renewable power. The project partners aim to solve storage issue by further developing an electrochemical conversion technology called ReSOC.

A ReSOC (Reversible Solid Oxide Cell ) device uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas by a high temperature electrolysis process and the exactly same device can also be operated “in reverse” to produce power from the very same hydrogen gas it produced. Using the same device for converting power to a storable gas and for converting this gas back to power again enables very flexible usage of the device, thus increasing its operating hours as well as reducing it capital costs.

The electricity market is being challenged when flooded by green electricity on a windy or sunny day. This causes the electricity prices to plunge or even go negative in some European countries. Because electricity cannot be stored as such and our current capacity to store it with hydropower or batteries is limited, the production of windmills and solar panels must at times be curtailed to avoid power grid failure.

Flexible Conversion technology ReSOC supports the integration of wind and solar power with the power system by providing a compact, affordable and a balance to the current power market. At peak production hours, power is converted into a chemical, which can be stored for later use or used as industrial feedstock. Similarly at peak consumption, the stored chemical is converted back to electricity at the same site.

Image: Schematics of the ReSOC concept. It is the missing link between the power grid and the fuel or the chemical feedstock for the industry.

The three-year project began in December 2016 and will receive EUR 2.5 million in EU Horizon 2020 funding (grant agreement 731224). It includes several leading European research institutes and universities in the field of electrochemical conversion, including VTT (FI), DTU (DK), CEA (FR), ENEA (IT), University of Birmingham (UK), TU Delft (NL), EPFL (CH) and IEn (PL).

Further information: www.balance-project.org