Meeting the world’s energy demand without accelerating climate change by implementing Renewable Energy massively.

The increase of energy demand in the world (led by China and India) is rising and the main resources that provide power, that is, oil and gas, are limited. By 2040 the energy demand will increase by 30%.

Renewable energy has become the best option in order to fulfill the need for present and future energy needs, meeting 40% of this growth of demand. Solar is now the cheapest form of new electricity in many countries. However, wind and solar energy’s main characteristic when implemented in a grid is the intermittency; that means wind and solar only produce energy when the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining.

Intermittency is the reason why low-carbon technologies can’t be implemented massively in a grid, basically for avoiding blackouts. The majority of the energy mix is led by technologies which can provide capacity, which is the ability to provide electricity affordably and reliably at any moment. These are coal, oil, hydro and nuclear.

The way to meet this world’s energy demand increase without accelerating climate change is improving the low-carbon technology’s capacity, and that means including Energy Storage Systems (ESS) to energy grids.

Current ESS solutions like ion Lithium are based in metals available only in specifics parts of the world (like happens with oil) and they need rare metals to produce the electrochemical reaction which produces electricity. That is the case of cobalt, smartphone battery uses no more than 10 grams of refined cobalt, an electric car needs 15kg (33lb). 60% of planet’s reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it is mined by unregulated labor force (children included) and transported to battery manufacturers.

The challenge of the energy sector in the next decades are:

• Meeting the energy demand.
• Decarbonizing energy generation for mitigating climate change.
• Finding resilient, affordable, reliable and ethic ESS for implementing massively renewable energy worldwide.

Why RedoNa

An Energy Storage System with low environmental impact.

RedoNa is a product that:

• Allows massive implementation of renewable energy worldwide.
• Can reduce the cost of current ESS by at least 50%.
• Can be developed to avoid the usage of rare metals.

The technology is patented and was developed by the University of Alicante (Spain). It consists in storing and releasing energy by hydrogen oxidation, the same principle like in fuel cells, but storing the energy in fluids, like the Redox Flow Batteries do. In such RedoNa system, the energy is stored by acidification and alkalization of two fluids; the release of the energy is driven by their neutralization, in the form of electrical power. During storage and release of the energy, hydrogen is generated at one electrode but is consumed in the other one, hence giving a zero net balance. The main key of this new method of energy storage is that it can be done only with salty water, which is worldwide available, and also reducing the amount of rare metals.

Applications

Discover where RedoNa can be applied.

RedoNa is specifically suitable:

• In wind and solar farms for:
  • Ramp-up power, voltage and frequency control.
  • Load sifting.
  • Firm capacity.
• Substitution of gas peaker plants.
• Peak shaving of demand in industrial sector.
• Decongestion of transmission energy network.
• Arbitrage.
• Microgrids.