Tata Power, an Indian power conglomerate, has announced that it will deploy a 35 MWh Energy Vault system in the next year.

Energy Vault system is based on the the principles of traditional gravity-based pumped hydro projects that rely on the power of gravity and the movement of water to store and discharge electricity.  The technology combines both potential and kinetic energy with a patented cloud-based software.

It is expected to address one of the biggest problems faced when dealing with renewable energy – intermittency. The company touts that its storage technology will help in achieving significantly lower cost per kilowatt-hour and high round trip efficiency. Energy vault system will have a 30-40-year life without any degradation in the storage capacity.

Some of the specifications of the system are as follows-

• 35 MWh nominal energy capacity and 4 MW peak power
• A millisecond response ramp time with 100 percent full power achieved in 2.9 seconds
• Roundtrip efficiency of ~90 percent; zero storage degradation over time with no energy loss
• Environmental sustainability of all materials through the product lifetime

“The world needs rapidly scalable and sustainable energy storage solutions to meet one of the most urgent challenges – the need to decarbonize our energy generation – and we’re thrilled to launch Energy Vault’s unique technology to help solve this problem,” said Robert Piconi, co-founder of Energy Vault.

One of the advantages of the Energy Vault system is its platform flexibility. It can be paired with renewable generation such as solar PV for off grid and microgrid solutions, or for commercial and industrial customers to maximize their renewable power usage. It can also deliver 24 hour a day power to remote towns and villages in emerging markets.

Recently, the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) awarded a grant to Vietnam Electricity (EVN), Vietnam’s state-owned power company, to examine the feasibility of deploying advanced energy storage technologies in Vietnam.

Earlier, Mercom also reported that India is working towards a national energy storage mission.