Battery Startup Eschews Costly Metals for Thermodynamic Storage
Energy Dome uses a closed thermodynamic system to store and discharge electricity when carbon dioxide is converted between liquid and gas.
Energy Dome's demonstration project in Ottana on the island of Sardinia.
Energy DomeCarbon dioxide is the greenhouse gas most responsible for our rapidly warming planet. But it also has useful properties that help to store electricity from renewable energy sources when it’s converted from gas to liquid.
Italian startup Energy Dome is harnessing those attributes through a system that can store power generated from wind and solar when it’s plentiful and dispatch electricity as demand rises. If successful, the energy storage company’s technology could play a crucial role in the rapidly expanding market for long-duration, utility-scale storage systems — a sector comprised of more than 40 startups that collectively raised more than $1 billion last year, according to clean energy research group BloombergNEF. The startup is one of this year’s BNEF Pioneers, an annual climate-tech innovation competition.