Medium Duration Energy Storage
Medium Duration Energy Storage refers to a class of energy storage duties in which energy stores are discharged continuously over periods of time lasting between 4 hours and 200 hours. Most, but not all, of the technologies suited to addressing this set of duties are thermo-mechanical in nature and it so happens that in future energy systems powered largely by variable renewable energy sources, most (>85%) of the energy that will emerge from storage will come out in periods of continuous discharge in the MDES range (4-200 hrs). On that basis alone, one might expect that markets and policy-making were already highly active in ensuring that the right conditions exist for the relevant technologies to exist. Sadly this is absolutely NOT the case.
This meeting was set up to explore what is being done already to elicit good progress in MDES so that we can reduce the costs of Net Zero and accelerate progress towards it. This pre-meeting document summarised the set of thoughts formulated prior to the meeting and formed a foundation from which to build. The meeting succeeded rather well in building a nice edifice of reasoning above that foundation.