Energy storage is the only solution to rectify intermittency of renewable energy over grid utility. Currently, most energy storage systems face significant constraints and challenges, which makes them not suitable for all applications and geographical locations. For small renewable energy systems, batteries are coming as state-of-art technology which might rapidly move into a state termed as battery lock-in. Meanwhile, batteries still have critical challenges when upscaled to grid storages such as safety, high investment cost, dependency on critical materials and low maturity in battery recycling. Therefore, it is essential to innovate alternative energy storage solutions between renewable energy sources and the grid. During my master’s thesis, I have created several new technical designs that eliminate the challenges stated above. This solution exists as a concept and therefore, it requires further studies to develop an experimental validation and optimisation before evolving as new alternative solutions. These novel electric-to-thermal energy storage systems have the capability to use varieties of thermal storage materials such as sands, thermal oils or molten salts. In addition, the system does not require critical materials and this makes it a very cheap energy storage system for both heat and power production. Pre-analysis shows that this novel electric-to-thermal energy storage system show improved efficiencies in comparison to other grid storage systems, and there is no potential risk of environmental degradation and they are easy to recycle. The solution for making renewable energy highly reliable is here; however, it requires further development to be technical and economically feasible.

2020

2021