Thermal battery an energy answer in hot heavy industry
Poppy Johnston |
Upgrading factories to store and use heat like power in a battery has been touted as a low-cost way to decarbonise heavy industry.
The potential of emerging electrothermal energy storage technologies – like batteries but for heat rather than electricity – has been assessed by Climateworks Centre for one of the Australia’s heavy industry hotspots, Gladstone.
Senior project manager at the think tank, Calvin Lee, said smarter timing of heat use by manufacturers “is key to cutting emissions, power prices and strengthening the grid”.
“‘Right now Australia’s biggest lever in an energy emergency is increasing supply and turning on expensive coal and gas,” Dr Lee said.
“Demand management – allowing industries to shift power use up and down like a giant battery – would add another much-needed emergency tool to the nation’s toolbelt.”
Australia is chasing a 62-70 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emission by 2035 and in 2022, industry accounted for 17 per cent of the nation’s total climate pollution.
Cutting emissions from manufacturing is challenging, however, especially for heavy industry reliant on extremely high processing heat.
The aluminium, clinker, cement, lime and various chemicals produced in Gladstone require industrial heat across the temperature spectrum, with significant opportunities for electrification in parts of the lower-temperature alumina and aluminium processing.
Fuel switching to low carbon alternatives such green hydrogen – once it becomes commercially available – and bioenergy for higher-temperature functions should pave the way to a near 80 per cent emissions reduction by 2040, as charted by Climateworks.
Under this scenario, a sevenfold increase in electricity demand can be expected alongside major growth in renewables-intensive green hydrogen.
Dr Lee said such an explosion in demand for electricity has the potential to push up prices, with that uncertainty already posing a barrier to companies looking to to electrify.
Electrothermal energy storage has been framed as a fix.
“You charge up in the middle of the day when electricity is plentiful, when it’s cheap, and then discharge the battery so you’re releasing all that heat when electricity expensive, for instance, in the mornings or in the evenings,” Dr Lee told AAP.
“And so that lets you constantly produce heat throughout the day while while avoiding the use of expensive electricity”.
His organisation views government as a partner in the shift towards flexible, low-carbon industry heat, including via low-cost financing pathways in recognition of steep upfront costs.
Were the precinct to lean into flexible energy demand management, the modelling suggests Gladstone industries could save $3 million a day in operating costs.
A flexibly electrified Gladstone industrial sector could also provide 4.4 gigawatts of flexible power by 2040, equivalent to three of Queensland’s largest power stations, and lower wholesale power prices.
Operating costs for flexible heat are calculated as roughly the same as conventional gas-fired boilers at present.
But going forward, Climateworks says the gas-centric, business-as-usual approach will become increasingly expensive as carbon penalties under the Safeguard Mechanism start to bite and wholesale gas prices remain volatile.
Australian manufacturers have been warning of collapse without government intervention to secure affordable gas supplies, as underscored by BlueScope Steel chief executive Mark Vassella at the National Press Club on Wednesday.
AAP
