The UK is starting construction near Manchester of the world’s largest battery. Spare green energy will be used to compress air into liquid for storage. Releasing the liquid back into gas willpower a turbine to put the green energy onto grid. The plant will be operational in 2022 and will be able to power up to 200.000 homes for five hours. Energy can be stored for many weeks. The new liquid air battery, being developed by Highview Power who’s boss says that ‘the main competitor is not other storage technologies but fossil fuels, as people still want to continue building gas and coal-fired plants today’. The project will cost £85m, and Highview received £35m of investment from the Japanese machinery giant Sumitomo in February. The liquid air battery is creating 200 jobs, mainly in construction. The UK government has supported the project with a £10m grant. The Highview battery will store 250MWh of energy, almost double the amount stored by the biggest chemical battery, built by Tesla in South Australia. The plant’s lifetime is expected to be 30-40 years.

Guardian