• Azelio’s Thermal Energy Storage-Power on Demand (TES.POD), produces zero emissions and is already scalable and competitive
• Abu Dhabi’s desert environment provides the project with ideal solar conditions
• The new technology represents an important part of the renewable transition
• The project will run at Masdar City, Abu Dhabi’s only planned and approved R&D cluster

An innovative R&D project by Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Sweden’s Azelio long duration energy storage company, and Masdar to demonstrate 24/7 affordable clean energy utilization was launched at Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. The cutting-edge distributed and scalable Thermal Energy Storage-Power on Demand (TES.POD) system is part of a three-party research and development agreement.

Now officially in operation, the Azelio storage system is used with solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and enables renewable and cost-efficient electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The system will undergo extensive testing and demonstration at the Khalifa University’s Masdar Institute Solar Platform (MISP), in a desert environment that provides ideal solar conditions to generate full daily cycles of clean energy in combination with solar PV.

Dr. Nicolas Calvet, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, and Founder & Chair of the MISP, Khalifa University, said, “The Khalifa University’s Masdar Institute Solar Platform provides a convergence of renewable energy research, development and demonstration, and serves as a foundation for the UAE’s ambition to achieve world-leading innovation in clean and renewable energy. The Azelio demonstration project is our flagship project and a success story for the MISP.”

Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice President, Khalifa University, said, “This collaboration builds on Khalifa University’s expertise in energy-related research and innovation, and reflects our efforts to leverage our state-of-the-art concentrating solar power and thermal energy storage research facility – the Masdar Institute Solar Platform. It will bridge the gap between idea and implementation, to deliver tangible, commercially-viable solutions that will drive the sustainable energy sector in the UAE and the wider region.”

Jonas Eklind, CEO and President of Azelio, said, “The strong position and deep knowledge in renewable energy of Masdar and Khalifa University make the MISP platform a perfect place to showcase and test our technology. We look forward to demonstrating our TES.POD together with other groundbreaking solutions and taking further steps towards a global establishment of the solution.”

Abdulla Balalaa, Executive Director, Masdar City, said, “Masdar City is committed to facilitating R&D projects that bring ground-breaking new technologies to the market and positively contribute to regional and global energy security. Azelio’s TES.POD system is another excellent example of what collaboration and innovation can achieve. Developing technologies that both protect and guarantee a constant, secure, and affordable source of electricity is extremely important and this project is set to bring us closer to that goal. As the regional home of technology innovation and R&D, at Masdar City, we are proud to be working with Azelio and Khalifa University to initiate and progress the TES.POD system.”

Over the next twelve months, Khalifa University researchers will continuously operate Azelio’s electrical thermal energy storage system, collecting and analyzing the data, while conducting an independent validation of the system. At the end of the year, Khalifa University will provide a report on the system’s performance in the desert environment.

The system’s storage units will be demonstrated and evaluated on several criteria, including supplying renewable electricity round-the-clock to a system for atmospheric water generation that captures humidity and condensates it to usable water. The capabilities of Azelio’s technology represent an important part of the renewable transition by making sustainable energy from, for example, cost-effective solar PV available at all hours of the day.

Azelio’s energy storage TES.POD stores energy as heat in a metal alloy made from recycled aluminum and silicon. The heat from the storage is transferred to a Stirling engine that enables supply of electricity and usable heat on demand at all hours of the day, without emissions and at an affordable price. The system is scalable and competitive from 0.1 to 100 MW_e.

Khalifa University’s MISP at Masdar City offers a valuable resource to equipment manufacturers, system integrators and installers, project developers, utility companies, investors, private end users, research organizations, and the public.

Staff Report
19 January 2022

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Using a recycled aluminium alloy to store the heat from the day’s sunshine allows the MISP to produce electricity 24/7

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The world is moving continuously towards using sources of energy that are more sustainable than the fossil fuels on which we predominantly rely today. Solar power is one of the most promising renewable energy technologies, especially in the UAE, allowing the generation of electricity from free, inexhaustible sunlight. But even though the sun shines every day, this resource is subject to supply fluctuations. Further, every night when the sun sets, as it inevitably does, the supply of solar energy ceases until the next morning.

Conventional batteries based on electrochemical storage can charge from solar energy during the day and provide power for a few hours at night, but their economical discharge duration is limited and they are made of critical materials that are not available in infinite supply.

However, a team from Khalifa University, in collaboration with Swedish solar energy company Azelio, and Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company), has drawn inspiration from this need for energy storage innovation and applied it to a natural process: the phase change of materials.

During the day when there is a lot of sun, solar energy is used to produce cheap electricity (photovoltaic panels) or provide some combination of heat and electricity (concentrated solar power (CSP). This sustainable energy can be used to melt a Phase Change Material or PCM. When temperatures drop off, those materials cool and re-solidify, releasing their latent heat in the process. A stirling engine can then convert this heat back to electricity on demand. The team aims to leverage this phase transition process using an alloy of aluminum to provide thermal powered electricity at night, after the sun goes down.

“This is the first demonstration of the Azelio technology and we’re looking at proving the long term viability of the system. We need to guarantee that it will last at least 25 years and that’s what we’re expecting. So we will evaluate the TESpod System during a full year of operation, collecting data and checking performances. We’re very excited about this installation as it uses recycled aluminium alloy and will be a game-changer in renewable energy,” said Dr. Nicolas Calvet, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at KU.

Dr. Calvet and his team have placed an aluminium alloy at the center of the Azelio’s energy storage system at the Masdar Institute Solar Platform (MISP), the UAE’s first solar platform dedicated to research and development of CSP and thermal energy storage (TES) technologies. 

This is how the Azelio TES technology works: Photovoltaic panels generate cheap electricity during the day. This electricity is used to melt the PCM using an electrical resistance heater. This same concept is possible using wind energy or excess grid electricity as well. Another configuration can use direct heat from CSP by leveraging generated heat to melt the aluminium alloy. When electricity is needed, the alloy is allowed to cool and resolidify, releasing heat that is then used to generate electricity.

“The Azelio Stirling engine is converting about 29 percent of the latent heat stored in aluminium alloy to make electricity, making Azelio’s TESPod system very cost competitive when charged with inexpensive solar energy,” explained Dr. Calvet. “This will allow us to produce 50 kW of electricity 24/7, meaning the MISP can generate its own energy during the day and during the night become energy independent.

The MISP was inaugurated in 2015 in recognition of the increasingly important role CSP and TES will play in achieving the UAE’s renewable energy target of generating 44 percent of its energy mix from renewable sources by 2050. With its one-of-a-kind 100kW beam-down solar concentrator facility among other, the MISP aims to provide local and international research institutes and solar and energy storage companies the opportunity to research, test and validate new CSP & TES components and systems, increasing efficiency, driving and driving down the costs of technologies that can withstand the UAE’s harsh desert climate.

Jade Sterling
Science Writer
7 December 2021

The post New Azelio Installation at Khalifa University’s Masdar Institute Solar Platform to Demonstrate Renewable Energy 24/7 appeared first on Khalifa University.

Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi’s flagship sustainable community Masdar City, and Wahaj Solar jointly announced the installation of a first-of-its-kind solar concentrator in the UAE at the Masdar Institute Solar Platform – a first step in the development of a unique scalable high-temperature Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) system including thermal energy storage for more efficient on-demand and ‘dispatchable’ electricity generation, solar fuels production or industrial process heat applications.

The ASC10 model, a 10-meter diameter pre-commercial scale solar concentrator, designed and developed by UAE-based Wahaj Solar, is located at the Masdar Institute Solar Platform (MISP) located at Masdar City. The MISP is also part of the Masdar Solar Hub, which was launched in 2015 with focus on accelerating and testing pilot scale solar technologies.

The newly installed concentrator – a metallic reflector-based giant Fresnel lens with fixed focal point relative to the ground – will offer a concentration ratio close to 1000 suns and temperatures above 1000 degrees Celsius, enabling the system to achieve higher temperature with less mirror surface, compared to conventional CSP systems. It can be combined with a more efficient high-temperature power generation system, helping to convert more solar energy into electricity. Moreover, high temperature thermal energy storage can be integrated with the ASC10.

Dr Arif Sultan Al Hammadi, Executive Vice-President, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, said: “The installation of UAE’s first-of-a-kind solar concentrator marks the next stage of Masdar Institute Solar Platform’s advancing research in solar energy technologies. The MISP stands as an example for innovation and we are keen to contribute to seeking new solutions to increase efficient clean generation of 24/7 power, which remains one of the strategic areas for the UAE. We believe the MISP will further enhance its significance to innovations in the energy sector, especially solar power, while attracting more industry collaborators.”

Motasim Al Daour, majority shareholder at Wahaj Solar, said: “After realizing the potential of the ASC technology and its coherence with UAE policies regarding innovative solar energy reliance especially in the topic of CSP, we decided to invest in developing and verifying the ASC and to introduce this breakthrough technology to the world from UAE. We are setting a unique example in the region where a private small company is created for the sole purpose of developing innovative new products with completely private investments”.

“Through combining technologies in power generation and storage, solar energy is becoming an increasingly reliable provider of electricity at night as well as during the day,” said Yousef Baselaib, Executive Director for Sustainable Real Estate at Masdar. “The launch of the UAE’s first Solar Concentrator at Masdar City will help to accelerate this exciting industry development, while providing further evidence of the potential for homegrown innovation here in the UAE.”

“As the natural home for innovation in clean-tech and sustainable urban development, Masdar City is delighted to be working alongside Khalifa University and Wahaj Solar to support R&D into concentrated solar power, a sector where Masdar is already playing a leading role. The Solar Concentrator will also complement other pilot projects hosted at the city and attract even more clean-tech businesses to Abu Dhabi and the UAE.”

Wahaj Solar proposed an innovative metallic-reflector-based Fresnel lens beam-down concentrator, called Ayman solar concentrator (ASC). A 40cm-prototype of this was successfully demonstrated in 2016 in Jordan. Based on this laboratory-scale proof-of-concept and an optical model, a new design of a 10-meter diameter pre-commercial scale unit was developed. This is currently under experimentation at the MISP in Masdar City. The system is protected by patents registered in the US, European Union Countries, GCC, and the World Intellectual Property Organization covering 150 countries worldwide.

Dr. Ayman Al-Maaitah, the inventor of ASC and the managing partner of Wahaj Solar said: “We have decided to launch this breakthrough technology form the UAE because of its vision in supporting innovation especially in the solar energy field. Khalifa University strongly declares its devotion to research and development and support of innovation. The Masdar Solar Platform at KU is an ideal location for testing and verifying new innovative solar technologies which will help us to obtain a verification from a respected third party of our system and hopefully to further develop its applications. “

With the newly installed concentrator, Khalifa University can develop other relevant projects to work on high-temperature thermal energy storage systems including thermochemical energy storage or solar fuel production. At a later stage, this could even lead to consider solar metallurgy by melting metals such as aluminum with solar energy alone.

Clarence Michael
News Writer
16 January 2020

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