The future of energy supply: combined energy storage as key technology

A system developed at TU Graz uses water as a storage medium for electricity and thermal energy. It can be used to meet up to 90% of our energy requirements – while producing zero emissions.

A young man with a beard in jeans and a blue T-shirt sits in the hydraulic engineering laboratory and is surrounded by experimental arrangements in the form of water-filled Plexiglas tubes.

Franz Georg Pikl from the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management is researching the future of global energy supply. He has developed a trend-setting technology in the form of the hot water pumped storage power plant. © Staudacher - TU Graz

The idea is simple. A team headed by Franz Georg Pikl, a PhD student at the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management at TU Graz, has combined the advantages of pumped storage technology and heat storage using water as a medium to create a “hot-water pumped storage hydropower plant”. The new system stores and supplies electricity, heat and cooling energy as required.

Switch to the news articel on the TU Graz website to read more about how the innovative three-in-one combined energy storage system works.