For the final 12 weeks, California start-up Rondo Energy has been working what it’s calling the world’s largest thermal battery. Rondo’s system converts low cost renewable electrical energy into warmth that may be discharged on demand into industrial processes.
This differs from most next-generation energy storage methods, which give electrical energy to grids within the absence of solar or wind. As a substitute, Rondo’s system goals to assist decarbonize emissions-heavy sectors like steelmaking and cement.
The system works like a toaster crossed with a blast furnace. Electrical energy from photo voltaic arrays warmth iron wires much like these in a toaster oven. These heat a whole bunch of tonnes of refractory bricks to temperatures as much as 1,500 °C. After 4 to 6 hours of charging a day, the warmth may be discharged as air or steam, with out combustion or emissions.
To discharge warmth, a circulating air blower is turned on, pushing air up by way of the brick stack and heating it to over 1,000 °C earlier than releasing it by way of an outlet. The warmth supply fee may be managed by adjusting the air move. The battery can discharge steam as a substitute of warmth by injecting water into an hooked up chamber that the heated air passes by way of earlier than leaving the battery by way of the outlet.
The true problem in thermal vitality storage just isn’t storing warmth; it’s having the ability to cost quickly after which ship warmth constantly on the identical temperature, says John O’Donnell, Rondo Vitality’s chief innovation officer. The construction of Rondo’s warmth battery, which O’Donnell describes as “a 3D checkerboard of brick and open chambers,” retains temperatures uniform and permits rapid charging. “We will flip charging circuits on and off as quick as you’ll be able to flip your toaster on and off,” O’Donnell says. “So we may be agile.”
In Rondo’s first venture, its 100-megawatt-hour battery is supplying warmth for an enhanced oil recovery facility operated by Holmes Western Oil Corp. in Kern County, California. The battery, which is in regards to the dimension of a small workplace constructing, is powered by an off-grid, 20-MW photo voltaic array constructed for this function. It converts the clear electrical energy into warmth, after which generates steam that’s injected into oil wells, heating the oil in order that it thins out and flows extra simply, rising manufacturing.
Holmes Western Oil beforehand completed this with a gas-fired boiler. Chopping it should save Holmes just below 13,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions yearly whereas additionally decreasing prices, in response to Rondo. “Making steam for oil fields is the second largest portion of business warmth within the state,” says O’Donnell.
Rondo’s option to deploy its first commercial-scale, emissions-reducing battery for the extraction of a fossil gas stirred some controversy. Critics argue that deploying clean tech to enhance or extend fossil gas manufacturing is counter-productive.
Thermal Batteries for Clear Industrial Warmth
A number of other companies are creating thermal batteries with industrial warmth purposes. Antora Energy makes modular carbon-block heat batteries that may attain over 1,500 °C and are being deployed at pilot industrial websites. EnergyNest is doing early industrial installations of its concrete-based thermal modules, and is partnering with Siemens Vitality to scale throughout Europe. Calectra’s ultra-high-temperature programs are within the pilot part, and EarthEn Energy launched its modular low-temperature warmth batteries in July.
These firms are centered on warmth as a result of it’s central to producing staples corresponding to metal, cement, meals and chemical substances. Many of those manufacturing processes run constantly and preserve excessive temperatures for weeks or months at a time, starting from 72 °C for pasteurizing milk to over 1,000 °C for making steel or cement.
The most affordable, best strategy to produce constant warmth has lengthy been with fossil fuels; nothing burns as sluggish and sizzling as coal or natural gas. Their energy density, reliability, and low value have made them arduous to interchange. Nonetheless, industrial warmth accounts for about 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and more than 20 percent of worldwide vitality consumption. So innovators aiming to decarbonize these industrial sectors have their work minimize out for them.
However solar power is getting cheaper. In 2024, California’s photo voltaic fields generated virtually as a lot electrical energy as its gasoline crops. “Due to what the wind and photo voltaic business have accomplished, we now have intermittent grid costs which are cheaper than gas in a whole lot of locations on this planet,” says O’Donnell. Some places generate a lot clear energy that the grid can’t take up all of it, forcing detrimental electricity prices for a few hours a day.
How Can Thermal Batteries Scale?
Thermal batteries supplying warmth face a number of challenges. To ensure that them to scale, industrial prospects should purchase renewable electrical energy wholesale at occasions of day when it’s low cost, which requires dynamic real-time pricing. Many states solely enable industrial prospects to purchase energy at fastened each day charges. “We’re actually desperate to see the regulatory framework get modernized,” O’Donnell says.
The value of pure gasoline performs a task, too. It’s comparatively cheap within the United States due to shale gasoline from fracking, but when its worth will increase as a result of exports or different components, batteries like Rondo’s might change into a less expensive supply of warmth. That is already the case in European international locations corresponding to Germany, the place the price of natural gas has skyrocketed within the final three and a half years.
Plus, warmth batteries may very well be tough to combine into present industrial infrastructure. Not each facility has house for a battery the scale of an workplace constructing and a devoted photo voltaic array. The batteries’ excessive up-front prices and the truth that they’re nonetheless a largely unproven know-how will make some would-be prospects reluctant to offer them a attempt.
Nonetheless, warmth batteries like Rondo’s are a promising resolution for decarbonizing the economic sector. “The thermal storage market is completely able to accelerating to create significant impression,” says Blaine Collison, govt director of the Renewable Thermal Collaborative, a coalition centered on decarbonizing thermal vitality. “Once I take a look at a few of the elementary traits of the know-how—comparatively easy supplies, means to off-take renewable electrical energy, modularity—I see scale.”
This text was up to date on October 31, 2025.
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