A disused industrial site near Manchester, England, is being transformed into the home of the world’s largest liquid air battery — a facility capable of powering up to 200,000 homes for five hours and storing renewable energy for weeks at a time. Construction has begun on the £85m project, developed by Highview Power, marking a significant step forward for long-duration energy storage technology.
At a glance
- Liquid air energy storage: The facility compresses spare renewable electricity into liquid air, then releases it back as gas to drive a turbine and return power to the grid when demand is high.
- Storage capacity: The plant will hold 250MWh of energy — nearly double the capacity of the largest chemical battery, Tesla’s facility in South Australia.
- Job creation: The project is generating around 200 jobs, many in construction, and is drawing workers from the oil and gas sector into clean energy roles.
The project is sited at the Trafford Energy Park, which also hosts a gas-powered plant and a closed coal station — a fitting symbol of energy transition. Highview Power expects the battery to be operational by 2022 C.E. and to remain in service for 30 to 40 years.
Why long-duration storage matters
Wind and solar energy have expanded rapidly, but they are intermittent by nature. The sun does not always shine, and the wind does not always blow. That gap between supply and demand is currently filled, in large part, by polluting gas-fired power plants.
Long-duration storage offers a cleaner alternative. Chemical batteries — the kind used in smartphones and electric cars — are falling in price quickly, but they can only hold relatively small amounts of energy for short periods. Pumped hydro, the largest existing form of storage, requires mountainous terrain and a reservoir. Liquid air energy storage, by contrast, can be built almost anywhere.
“Air is everywhere in the world,” said Javier Cavada, chief executive of Highview Power. “The main competitor is really not other storage technologies but fossil fuels, as people still want to continue building gas and coal-fired plants today.”
Alex Buckman, an energy storage expert at the Energy Systems Catapult, confirmed that the U.K. electricity grid will need significantly more than the 30% renewable share it had at the time construction began. He noted that liquid air energy storage is “right up there as an option” for meeting long-duration needs, especially given its scalability compared to gravity storage or large-scale green hydrogen — both less developed at this stage.
How the technology works
Liquid air energy storage works on a surprisingly elegant principle. When renewable electricity is abundant — say, on a windy night when demand is low — the surplus power is used to cool and compress air until it liquefies. That liquid air is then stored in insulated tanks at low pressure.
When electricity demand rises, the liquid air is allowed to return to its gaseous state. That expansion drives a turbine, which generates electricity and feeds it back into the grid. The cycle produces no direct emissions and, critically, can store energy for weeks rather than hours.
Highview Power received £10m in U.K. government funding and a £35m investment from Japanese industrial giant Sumitomo in early 2020 C.E. The company is already developing further sites across the U.K., continental Europe, and the U.S., including a project in Vermont — but the Manchester facility is the first of its scale anywhere in the world.
A post-industrial site becomes a clean energy landmark
There is something deliberate about the choice of location. The Trafford Energy Park sits alongside an operating gas plant and a decommissioned coal station. Building the world’s most advanced renewable storage facility on the same ground where fossil fuels once dominated sends a clear signal about the direction of travel.
The plant’s expected 30-to-40-year lifespan means it will serve communities well into the second half of this century. “It will pass to the next generation,” Cavada said.
The U.K. government framed the project as part of a broader economic and environmental recovery, with then-Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng calling it “revolutionary” and pointing to its role in creating what he described as “green-collar jobs” in Greater Manchester.
Still, one facility — even a record-breaking one — cannot on its own resolve the storage challenge facing power grids worldwide. Buckman noted that cost reduction at scale remains the critical test for liquid air technology. Proving the economics at this first commercial scale will determine how quickly the approach spreads.
Highview Power views the Manchester project as a proof point for global export. “The first one is definitely the most important,” Cavada said, “and this is why we really value the U.K. government’s bold move to use U.K. technology to solve U.K. problems and afterwards export the tech globally.”
The International Renewable Energy Agency has identified long-duration storage as one of the most pressing gaps in the global energy transition. Projects like this one, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Long Duration Storage Shot initiative, reflect a growing recognition that building more renewables is only half the solution — keeping the power flowing when generation dips is the other half.
Read more
For more on this story, see: The Guardian
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Ghana establishes a new marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on renewable energy
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