Kraftanlagen Energies & Services, our German subsidiary, the Jülich Solar Institute and their industrial partners have just inaugurated the “Green Heat Module” which has been set up for an experiment in the multiTESS plant.
This solution is made up of honeycomb ceramic bricks and provides a CO2-free energy supply on an industrial scale. Oliver Krischer, Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport of North Rhine-Westphalia and Jeannette Lemmes, Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, said that “this technology could become a model for many residential, commercial and industrial districts”.
Together with the Solar Institute Jülich and industrial partners, Kraftanlagen Energies & Services has researched and developed a green heat module, for the first time. By using the Green Heat thermal energy storage module, natural gas and coal are replaced by green energy for industrial heat generation.
The experimental installation set up as part of the multiTESS project runs at 1,000 degrees Celsius. The emphasis is on supplying CO2-free heat and electricity from regional renewable energy sources.
A green heat module reliable and CO2-free
The supply of reliable and CO2-free heat and electricity from regional renewable energy sources is a complex industrial problem. With the Green Heat Module, energy can be stored as high temperature heat (“charged”) and can then be converted back into electricity when needed (“uncharged”).
Moreover, external heat sources – such as waste heat from industrial processes – can also be included. It is also possible to use the stored heat not only to generate electricity, but also to supply public heating systems or to provide industrial heat to heavy industry.
Alfons Weber, CEO of Kraftanlagen Energies & Services, sums it up: “We face a historic turning point in the supply of industrial heat: Increasingly, electricity generation from renewable energy sources is becoming cheaper than fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. Our Green Heat Module solution capitalises on this shift. It generates and stores industrial heat to supply the network, i.e. when renewable energy is available at a favourable price, thereby enabling a CO2-free and emission-free basic supply”.
As it is available now and can be scaled up to multi-gigawatt-hour storage capacities, GHM has great potential to reduce fossil fuel use and therefore reduce import dependency and climate-damaging emissions. It could well become a central feature of the energy transition.
