American company Rondo Energy just announced that it will partner with Thailand’s Siam Cement Group (SCG) to expand the production capacity of Rondo Heat Battery storage at SCG’s facility to 90 Gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, larger than any current battery manufacturing facility worldwide. Mass production is currently underway with a capacity of 2.4 GWh per year already online.
The 90 GWh of planned capacity will result in 12 million tons of CO2 savings annually, equivalent to removing over 4 million internal combustion engine vehicles to the road each year. Rondo’s Heat Battery stores electric power as high temperature heat in refractory brick, without the use of combustibles, critical minerals, toxics, or liquids.
With this technology, wind and solar can deliver continuous zero-carbon industrial heat at lower cost than fossil fuels, a critical need for industries worldwide. The first Rondo Heat Battery is now commercially operating at a California ethanol plant, serving an industrial customer with the world’s highest temperature, highest efficiency energy storage of any kind.
SCG, through its subsidiary SRIC, produces refractory brick at large scale. Rondo and SCG aim to achieve Heat Battery production at large scale. SCG’s refractory production operations are already the largest in Southeast Asia.
Industry uses more energy than any other part of the world economy, and most industrial energy is used as heat. Industrial heat consumes a quarter of total world energy and today releases a quarter of the world’s CO2. Industrial heat has been seen as difficult to decarbonize due to challenges of cost, continuity, and temperature. Rondo Heat Batteries transform intermittent wind and solar power into the continuous high-temperature and low-cost heat that industry needs. This planned production will support installations powering a wide range of industries, from mining and metals to fuels to food production, at facilities around the world.
(Source: Rondo Energy)
