Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice.com,
China just broke ground on a revolutionary new hybridized energy production and storage facility. The power plant will store excess energy in the form of molten salt, and then produce electricity during peak demand times through a supercritical carbon dioxide system. The goal of the project is to limit energy waste while also stabilizing the local power grid. The project could also inform future next-gen energy and energy storage systems, including for application in the nuclear power sector and even on the moon.
Construction of the Ruitan demonstration project began last week in Shandong province in eastern China. The facility is expected to be up and running by next year, at which point it will be the first of its kind to operate on the planet. The first phase of the project will involve a supercritical unit with a capacity of 50 megawatts, and a molten salt energy storage system with a 100 megawatt capacity.
The facility is being built on the site of an existing coal-fired plant, the Bajiao power station in Yantai. The new system will capture surplus energy from the coal plant when demand is low and store it in the form of thermal energy within a molten salt reactor. Then, at peak demand hours,
