Hybridized Thermal Energy Storage Pilot Plant

An innovative hybridized Thermal Energy Storage (TES) technologies pilot plant at the Iberian Research Centre for Energy Storage Research (CIIAE) in Cáceres (Spain) has been designed by RPow in 2024 and will be built in 2025. The project design enables both individual and simultaneous research about charge-discharge operations based on Molten Salts (MS), Phase Change Materials (PCM) and Sorption. The plant design configuration allows in turn testing with different heat transfer fluids (HTF, initially Helisol5A) and thermoregulating fluids (nano-capsules or micro-capsules). Researching object belong to prototyping (TRL’s 4-5) and demonstration (TRL’s 6-7). Moreover, the early research carried out about desired functionalities during the engineering definition has made it possible a TES management identification, searching for a thermal integration between the different technologies. This strategy has provided an increased overall efficiency during the expected researching tests along the plant lifetime and the future exploration of real applications and synergies between the TES systems at different temperature stages from 30 – 565 ºC.