Hyme Energy’s first-of-a-kind CHP retrofit, in Bornholm

Hyme has joined forces with Bornholms Energi & Forsyning (BEOF) to build a demonstrator plant to prove its technology in an operational setting.

The plant will have a storage capacity of up to 20 MWh and will output around 1 MW. It will provide heat, power and also ancillary services to the grid.

Instead of shutting down outdated fossil-fueled plants and scrapping assets worth billions, these plants can be repurposed to house state-of-the-art energy storage reusing, eg, existing turbines and transformers. This approach “would make the transition of the energy sector less costly, save resources, and – importantly – let traditional power and CHP plants continue to play the important role of stabilising the grid,” says Hyme.

Hyme’s technology will be implemented as part of a larger project, “2nd Life in Power Plants”, which aims to show that several storage technologies can be installed together in retrofits of traditional power and combined heat and power plants.

Hyme Energy says it is “particularly happy to be able to deploy its technology on Bornholm”, because it is expected to become an epicentre of the Danish energy sector as an energy island.

Energy storage will be needed at large scale on energy islands to compensate for intermittent renewable power production, Hyme believes.

Hyme’s energy storage plants are able to employ molten hydroxide salts thanks to proprietary corrosion control technology developed for nuclear applications by its affiliated company Seaborg.

The Bornholm project will be the first to use molten hydroxide salts in this way, “a game-changer for molten salt energy storage”, says Hyme.