Agreement between the government of Rio Grande Do Norte and EV Brasil, Brazilian sales representative of swiss company Energy Vault, regarding green energy storage, signed Tuesday (September 21st)
The Governor of the State of Rio Grande do Norte signed this Tuesday, September 21, 2021, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the company EV Brasil Consultoria Ltda, Brazilian representative of the Swiss company Energy Vault SA, for the development in the State of a large-scale, long-term gravitational green energy storage project.
Energy Vault’s solution received the “Technology Pioneer 2020” Award from the World Economic Forum (Davos) and has among its stockholders Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, the Mexican cement company Cemex and the Japanese fund Softbank. The technology that the company intends to bring to the state has been already tested in Switzerland and uses environmentally sustainable composite blocks stacked in towers up to 120 m high to store gravitational potential energy. The plan is to associate the project with the production of green hydrogen, that can be started in the state in the next years thanks to the Offshore Wind market opening in Brazil.
“Rio Grande do Norte continues to lead the national ranking of wind power generation and now is taking another leading edge position, becoming the first Brazilian state and one of the first in Latin America to adopt new technological solutions regarding large scale energy storage”, said Governor Maria de Fátima Bezerra, who also highlighted that the project will contribute with the development of the supply chain of Renewable Energy, especially the offshore wind market, and Green Hydrogen in Rio Grande do Norte.
The Governor stressed the importance of implementing new technologies to improve Brazil`s energy safety. “We are living difficult times in a country with such potential as Brazil, threatened today even by blackout risk and a crisis in the electric system. Another reason for us to value and celebrate the moment we are living today signing this MoU”, she added.
Energy Vault's gravitational green energy storage projects will bring considerable investments to the state territory, as they are based in a localized supply chain that maximizes local job creation over 8 to 10 months of construction and assembly, providing additional social benefits, such as training the local workforce, increasing the income of local communities, and having the consequent improvement in the quality of life.
“The world is at a critical inflection point in the shift towards broader adoption of renewable energy sources. Energy Vault is accelerating this transformation as we now move to global deployments and market adoption of the technology to help energy providers and industrial customers more cost-effectively meet their sustainability and decarbonization goals” said Energy Vault’s Worldwide CEO, Robert Piconi, who participated remotely in the signing of the MoU, from Switzerland.
“Wind and solar renewable energy generation is eminently intermittent and its massive use 24x7 requires the development of storage solutions that are reliable and flexible. Our Energy Vault solution is based in a more efficient, durable and environmentally sustainable design than other options, with a round trip efficiency of 80 to 85%, a useful life spam of over 35 years, without generation of chemical waste and without degradation of its storage capacity over time,” said João Fernandes, CEO of EV Brasil, who highlighted a potential in the order of 400-600 MW of gravitational green energy storage units by 2024 in Rio Grande do Norte.
The state remains the Brazilian leader in the production of renewable energy, with 177 parks in operation, 52 under construction and 64 already contracted. Adding all the projects, there are 9.6 GW of power, according to data from the National Electric Energy Agency (Aneel), out if which 5.0 GW of already installed Wind Power Generation.
Rio Grande do Norte has also the largest annual average capacity factor for offshore wind power generation in Brazil, reaching 61%, and the state potential for offshore Wind is between 110 and 140 GW.
In the first 6 months of 2021 the Government of Rio Grande do Norte has attracted BRL 5,359 billion (around USD 1 billion) of already committed investments in wind power generation for the state.
EV Brasil is a company dedicated to providing solutions in the area of renewable energy, especially wind and solar generation, from the structuring of projects, attracting investments from foreign funds, technical and regulatory assistance for implementation, and supply of large-scale, long duration energy storage equipment based on the green gravitational technology of the Swiss company Energy Vault SA. ( www.energyvault.com )
With a management team of professionals with over 35 years of experience in the Energy area in Brazil and abroad, EV Brasil works collaborating towards the global transition to a resilient and carbon-free energy network. The company actively participates in the fight against climate change with green and innovative energy storage technology, accelerating the shift to a truly renewable world.
João Fernandes, jdedeus.fernandes@evbrasil.com