Iron-air battery
Preparations for the construction of an experimental energy storage facility under the Form Energy project have begun at the Sherburn County Generating Station in Becker, Minnesota. This is a $760 million technology demonstrator that will have a record capacity of 10 megawatts/1 gigawatt-hour. It is planned that it will work in conjunction with Xcel Energy's Sherco Solar, the largest solar power plant in the United States with a capacity of 710 MW, which is being built next door.
The Form Energy project is considered one of the most promising in the field of creating large-scale energy storage, without which energy based on renewable sources does not make sense. The idea is extremely simple: energy accumulates and is released during the oxidation and reduction of iron, which is why the design was nicknamed the "rusty battery". In addition to iron, water and oxygen are involved in the process – safe and affordable substances.
Iron-air battery
Iron-air battery
The disadvantage of the "rusty battery" is the duration of the charging and discharging cycle, which reaches 100 hours, so it is intended for multi-day use with the participation of large consumers. There are much more advantages: for example, the cost of storing energy in such a battery is only 10% of the cost of storage in a lithium analog. Iron is cheap, durable and can always be recycled. The design is very bulky, takes up a lot of space, but such batteries are easy to scale to achieve the desired parameters. The giant "rusty battery" is expected to start operating in 2025.
Alexander Martynenko