At the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2022), Dutch start-up Ocean Grazer released their design for the Ocean Battery. The battery is an energy storage system, which holds energy for periods when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing. Ocean Battery is a brand-new project for energy storage and functions much like a hydroelectric dam at the bottom of the sea. [1]
Figure 1: Rampion Offshore Wind Farm, United Kingdom. [2]
The Big Idea!
Dutch start-up Ocean Grazer is the mastermind behind the Ocean Battery and are led by Frits Bliek and Max Duursma, two professionals with over 20 years of experience in the maritime and energy sector, and Marijn van Rooij, who has spent 5 years researching the Ocean Battery concept. The Ocean Grazer team now consists of twelve individuals, showing that even smaller teams can create big ideas. [3]
The Ocean Battery is a scalable, modular solution and is intended to be implemented on the seafloor near offshore renewable energy generators, such as:
- Wind turbines,
- Floating solar farms,
- Tidal, and
- Wave energy systems.
Ocean Battery is a pumped hydro system in a box, that provides eco-friendly utility-scale energy storage. The structures are buried in the seabed within a concrete reservoir that holds up to 20 million litres of freshwater. Each concrete reservoir has a capacity of 10 MWh, so adding more of these can increase the overall capacity and make the project highly scalable. [4]
How Does It Work?
To collect energy, the system pumps water from the rigid reservoirs into the flexible bladders on the seabed. This means that the energy is now being stored as potential energy in the form of water under high pressure. When there is power demand, the water flows back from the flexible bladders to the low-pressure rigid reservoirs, driving multiple hydro turbines to generate electricity. [5]
The system has an efficiency of between 70 and 80 percent, and should be able to run an unlimited number of cycles over a lifetime of more than 20 years. According to the online newspaper “Japan Today”, Ocean Grazer will have an operational Ocean Battery in the northern Netherlands as early as 2023, with expansion following by 2025. [6]
The Advantages
The Ocean Battery is relatively flexible and scalable and makes the transition to renewable energy much easier. If weather conditions aren’t ideal for standard wind and solar farms to generate power, the Ocean Battery has some set aside in storage to feed into the grid. [7]
The Future
As with all new technologies, it will be a matter of time as to whether the Ocean Battery catches on and can live up to its promise. It’s also important to note that other energy storage systems are in the works. However, there’s not going to be one solution that suits every situation, so solving a global problem like renewable energy storage is likely going to take a whole army of these different, creative ideas.
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References
[1] New Atlas. 2022. Ocean Battery stores renewable energy at the bottom of the sea. [online]
[2] Nicholas Doherty (January 2019) from Unsplash. Accessed on 21st February 2022. Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/pONBhDyOFoM
[3] Ocean Grazer. 2022. Home. [online]
[4] Hill, J. and Hill, J., 2022. Ocean Grazer launches “infinitely scalable” ocean battery. [online]
[5] Ocean Grazer. 2022. Home. [online]
[6] Melvin, J., 2022. ‘Ocean battery’ targets renewable energy dilemma. [online] Japan Today.
[7] Green Matters. 2022. What Is the Ocean Battery? It Could Be Crucial for Renewable Energy Storage. [online]
