Cold air heating up with 200MW/2,500MWh project

What happened

On 15 October 2024, Highview Power announced a 200MW/2500MWh project in North Ayrshire, Scotland, which will be the second commercial system using its liquid air energy storage tech. The project will be at Hunterston PARC, an industrial campus in Fairlie, Scotland. A planned LNG regasification facility could provide Highview’s system with 'waste cold' during charging; waste heat could be accessed from a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant during discharge. Highview’s first three projects were co-located with sources of waste heat which boosted their nominal round trip efficiencies (RTEs) by 10 percentage points to 70%, but Hunterston’s RTE could be even higher because it also has access to ‘waste cold.’

Highview will first install power-generating equipment, with minimal storage capacity, so the system can earn revenues from capacity and ancillary services markets while the bulk of the energy storage capacity is built in the second phase. However, the first phase will not qualify for the UK cap-and-floor program, which only supports systems that can discharge at full power for at least 6 hours.

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