Irish clean energy developer Lumcloon Energy is partnering with Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) to develop a supercapacitor energy storage system (SCESS) in County Offaly, Ireland.
The partnership, called Project Daejeon, will install a demonstration-scale SCESS at the Rhode Green Energy Park, the site of a former ESB peat-fired power station that closed in 2003.
It is the first such project in Ireland and one of the first in Europe, mainly using supercapacitor technology operational in China. Startup headquartered in Estonia Skeleton Technologies has two European production plants where it produces several products based on its supercapacitor and battery storage technologies, but there are currently no supercapacitor projects of the same scale as Project Daejeon online in the region.
Supercapacitors can do that charge and discharge much faster than electrochemical batteries and undergo virtually no degradation. With a lower energy density than batteries, supercapacitors are suitable for high-power, short-duration activities such as frequency response.
Project Daejeon will be co-located with a demonstration-scale mini data center cooled using liquid cooling technology, with the data center servers and IT infrastructure housed in a container immersed in coolant.
This will enable it to demonstrate how fast-response energy storage can support digital infrastructure, ensure energy stability and reduce pressure on the local electricity grid.
Dr. Sergei Albu, technical director of Lumcloon Energy, said supercapacitors “represent one of the most exciting frontiers in grid-scale energy storage.”
“The integration of ultra-fast storage with an immersion cooled data center load is technically novel. It allows us to study how these two systems interact under live network conditions and generate the performance data needed to support broader commercial deployment,” he added.
KEPCO, South Korea’s national electricity company, is involved in the project through its R&D department KEPRI (Korea Electric Power Research Institute), which develops and implements grid and energy storage technologies internationally.
The project is supported by Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government agency that provides financing, advice and development support to Irish businesses. A planning application for the supercapacitor has been submitted to Offaly County Council on behalf of Lumcloon Energy.
The Irish company is also involved Energy Dome’s 23MW/200MWh CO2 battery energy storage systemat the Rhode Green Energy Park, which recently signed a tolling agreement with Google.
