Renewable energy giant Ørsted puts RFC Power’s technology to the test

RFC Power at home on Imperial's White City Campus

A new partnership will explore the role RFC Power’s energy storage technology could play across Ørsted’s renewable energy network.

Imperial startup RFC Power has been selected from a pool of more than 150 contenders to partner with Ørsted, one of the world’s biggest renewable energy companies. The partnership will put RFC Power’s energy storage technology to the test in situations where it can help buffer fluctuations in the supply of renewable power.

“Low-cost, very large-scale electricity storage is something that will become increasingly important as we move forward, because of the intermittency of renewables,” explains Professor Anthony Kucernak, one of RFC Power’s four co-founders. “Being able to integrate that technology at certain points in the energy system is really important.”

RFC Power has developed a regenerative fuel cell that combines the benefits of a flow battery with the best elements of fuel cell technology to efficiently convert electrical energy to chemical energy and back again. The company’s technology is underpinned by research from the labs of Professor Kucernak in the Department of Chemistry and Professor Nigel Brandon in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering.

Established in 2017 and based at Imperial’s White City Incubator, RFC Power has now reached the point where it is ready to put its energy storage technology into live networks. “The fact that Ørsted has selected us as a partner is a real validation of the commercial prospects of our technology,” says Dr Tim von Werne, Chief Executive of RFC Power.

 All green energy

Ørsted began life in the 1970s as Dansk Olie & Naturgas (Danish Oil and Natural Gas), but changed its name in 2017 after divesting all of its fossil fuel interests. Now the company develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, renewable hydrogen, green fuel facilities, and bioenergy plants.

The fact that Ørsted has selected us as a partner is a real validation of the commercial prospects of our technology. Dr Tim von Werne RFC Power

“Ørsted is one of the world’s largest green electricity producers, which means it is facing some of the  challenges that come from relying completely on variable renewables earlier than other businesses,” explains Dr von Werne. “So, the fact that they recognise the technology we are developing as a potential solution to those challenges is really significant for us.”

The connection was made through Ørsted Propel, a startup acceleration programme that Ørsted ran this year together with Rockstart in the Netherlands. Eight startups from across Europe were selected to take part in the programme, from more than 150 applications. Four companies, including RFC Power, have now been chosen to develop a closer collaboration with Ørsted.

The aim is to help the startups – all with complementary approaches to energy storage – reduce technological and market risks, and to accelerate market adoption of their solutions for commercial-scale implementation.

From validation to deployment

For RFC Power, the first step in the collaboration will be validation of the business case for its technology. “That will involve taking some of the core performance parameters for our technology and combining them with the unique, real-time market information to which Ørsted has access,” says Dr von Werne.

Part of this work will be to identify settings where RFC Power’s storage systems might be usefully located. Examples include co-locating energy storage with solar power generation, or using it with wind power, either with onshore wind farms or where offshore power cables reach land.

A third option would be to integrate energy storage with a hydrogen production site. “We utilise hydrogen in our energy storage system, so co-location with a site that is already generating green hydrogen would probably make sense,” says Dr von Werne.

If work on the business case is positive, a pilot installation could follow in 2025. If this, in turn, is successful, a commercial deployment of several tens of megawatts of storage might follow in 2027 or 2028.

Changing gear

This will mean a dramatic but necessary change of pace for RFC Power. “If you want to make a difference in the energy space, you need to think about how to scale your technology quickly,” says Professor Kucernak. “The relationship with Ørsted is one that will be really important in terms of understanding that, and thinking about how we scale and deploy the technology.”

The relationship will also help inform ongoing research at Imperial, both on issues where RFC Power can still benefit from collaboration and broader questions linked to the future of energy.

“We are interested in doing really good science, of course, but also science that answers questions that are relevant today, and need to be answered for tomorrow and the decades to come,” says Professor Kucernak. “One of the benefits of being involved in a company like this is that you have a little bit of a crystal ball. You can see where things are going, and start working on those issues early.”