Ocean Grazer, a Dutch business, won the CES 2022 “Best of Innovation” award for their Ocean Battery technology. They appear to have earned the “Best of” award not for the technology itself, but for its potential for use in offshore wind farms.
The fundamental factor is that wind energy operates on its own schedule, which is frequently out of step with power demand. Wind turbines may continue to operate even when demand is low.
Ocean Grazer emphasizes a critical benefit of their technology over pumped hydro storage: with its “in-a-box” underwater system, there is no need to locate a new pumped hydro reservoir on land. The system’s heart is a flexible, high-pressure bladder enclosed within a concrete reservoir buried beneath the seabed. To charge the battery, you pump seawater into the bladder from the hard reservoir.
The bladder’s pressure does the rest. When additional kilowatts are required, water is discharged to power turbines. The pumps and turbines are conventional in design and are located in an easily accessible machine room.
The Ocean Battery is built using standardized building components, which enables the mixing and merging of storage space and capacity. The storage volume may be calculated by joining an exact number of rigid reservoir elements, each having a storage capacity of 10 MWh, in order to provide the needed storage volume.
Additionally, these battery systems in wind farms present an ideal chance to establish artificial safe havens for marine species in order to rebuild their ecosystems.
Reference- CES website, Ocean Grazer website & PR, PR Newswire, Popular Science