Energy storage can supply ‘bullets for Europe’s energy war' says Bill Gates-backed tech pioneer
As continent continues painful move away from Russian gas, it remains unable to use renewable energy assets to their full effect
Europe is currently fighting three wars and energy storage can help provide the “bullets” it needs to prevail in at least one, says the founder of sector pioneer Rondo Energy.
This predicament is a symptom of Europe’s success in rolling out wind and solar farms, while not having the grid capacity to move power to where it is needed, or storage capacity to save it for when it is required.
“Look at Scotland,” said O'Donnell. “We're discarding power at the Scottish border and running gas-fired power stations near London because we have not built the transmission capacity.”
That wasted power from Scottish wind farms is he said an “opportunity for economic growth” currently being wasted. “When you hear negative prices, when you hear curtailment, think economic growth.”
The world now has the storage technology to put wasted green power in Scotland and elsewhere to work “running our factories,” he said. “And you know our approach has been 'don't change the factory just change the fuel'.”
Rondo has pioneered a technique that stores excess green energy for industry by using it to heat thousands of tons of bricks up to temperatures of 1,500°C. The bricks are later used to superheat air, which then spins a turbine to generate electricity when needed.
“Europe is a huge portion of our business today because of what is happening in the electricity grid,” he said.
Energy storage can “absorb these negative prices,” which in turn helps strengthen the case for building more renewables – something that negative power prices and persistent curtailment otherwise erode the economic case for.
Hitting that target is seen as necessary if another global goal – tripling renewables capacity to 11TW by 2030 – is to be achieved.
The storage sector might be playing catch up but it needed a “pent-up demand” from the power sector that didn't quite exist a few years ago, said O'Donnell. “Now it does,” and it will spark “massive investments in grid electricity storage.
“This is the beginning of the next wave.”
The ability to store green power for when it’s needed is also important for energy security, a topic of pressing concern in Europe since the invasion of Ukraine pushed the continent into going cold turkey on Russian gas.
O'Donnell recalled sitting in a meeting organised by Breakthrough that was attended by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
“She said we're in three wars, a ground war, an energy war, and a clean energy war with China.”
“The bullets in Europe's energy war are domestic green electrons,” said O'Donnell. "Energy security is national security."
Europe has gone from a dependence on Russian gas to a dependence on pricier imported LNG, he said. “The renewables industry can with energy storage like ours provide a permanently low cost energy supply.”
O'Donnell’s message: “Let’s get to it.”
That will involve eliminating regulatory obstacles and getting grid, storage and other projects permitted, he said.
That does not mean building an energy system that “runs roughshod over communities.”
“On the other hand… somebody who doesn’t want to see a wind turbine or a power plant from their back garden should not be deciding the fate of a nation.”
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