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In Breakthrough for Clean Power
Generation, Mainspring Announces World's First
Generator to Run Both Hydrogen and Ammonia Fuels
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The Mainspring Linear Generator is
the world's first generator to directly run both 100% hydrogen (shown)
and 100% ammonia fuels,
in addition to biogas and many other fuels. Its unique fuel flexibility
allows it to automatically switch between fuels using innovative
software-based control.
Major advancement for resilient, clean
electricity
MENLO PARK, Calif.,
June 22, 2022
/PRNewswire/ -- In an important breakthrough towards a resilient,
zero-carbon electric grid, Mainspring Energy today announced that its
Mainspring Linear Generator has passed key tests directly running 100%
hydrogen and 100% ammonia fuels at high efficiencies. It is the first
power generation technology to provide this level of fuel flexibility
within a single product, significantly reducing customer investment
risk in delivering resilient, clean, dispatchable, and low-cost
electricity for both power grids and commercial and industrial uses.
In addition to hydrogen and ammonia, the Mainspring product runs on
biogas, renewable natural gas, and other widely available gaseous
fuels, and can switch between fuels automatically with software-based
control. The technology has the potential to solve significant
decarbonization challenges in meeting aggressive climate goals.
The scalability of the Mainspring product
allows for use in behind-the-meter applications as well as in large
grids, microgrids, data centers, and similar operations that require
support for 24/7 clean power, clean backup generation, and clean
firming capabilities. The products are in the field today powering the
operations of Fortune 500 companies. Mainspring intends to deliver a
model that is UL certified to directly run both hydrogen and ammonia,
along with all other gaseous fuels, next year.
"Clean fuels are essential to
decarbonizing the grid and supporting the rapid growth of solar and
wind power. They provide all the advantages of fossil fuels -
resilience, low-cost cross-seasonal storage, and ease of transport -
without the carbon," said Shannon Miller,
Mainspring CEO and founder. "We designed the fuel-flexible Linear
Generator so that as clean fuels become increasingly available and
cost-effective, organizations of all kinds can capitalize on them to
run their operations, generate zero-carbon power, and meet their
climate goals."
Dr. Michael
Webber, the Josey Centennial Professor in Energy Resources at
the University of Texas at Austin, said,
"Fuels like zero-carbon hydrogen and zero-carbon ammonia have the
potential to reshape the national energy landscape. Any device that
could efficiently convert ammonia directly and cleanly to electricity
would be a game-changer for the use of ammonia on the power grid to
firm renewables, since it would avoid the energy loss associated with
converting ammonia back to hydrogen to use as a fuel."
Policy makers around the world are moving
to accelerate the development of clean fuels as a means of growing
their economies and decarbonizing many sectors. The European
Commission's 2020
Hydrogen Strategy calls for a $430
billion investment in green hydrogen by 2030. The U.S.
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed in 2021 allocates
$9.5 billion in clean hydrogen
initiatives, and expert grid models such as the
Net-Zero America Project include hydrogen as an important zero
carbon fuel for generating clean, firm, power. In 2021,
South Korea announced that hydrogen
will become the country's largest single energy source by 2050,
accounting for 33% of its total energy consumption.
A Zero-Carbon Solution for
Multi-Day Resilience and Renewables Firming
Among the numerous applications for
clean, firm, utility-scale power that a Mainspring Linear Generator
running zero-carbon fuels can provide, an immediate high-potential
application is displacing use of diesel generators for backup
generation operations.
Diesel backup generators continue to be
widely used at data centers, hospitals, and other operations that
require backup power to operate during grid power outages. These
diesel generators emit significant amounts of greenhouse gasses and
harmful pollutants like soot that impact public health. A 2021 report
by economic and policy consulting group M.Cubed found that
California alone housed diesel backup
generators with a capacity greater than 12 Gigawatts, about 15% of the
state's entire electricity grid, with increasing deployments planned.
A Mainspring product running directly on
100% clean hydrogen or ammonia could replace a diesel backup generator
with equal resilience at zero-carbon, while being available to also
provide other benefits such as easy permitting, demand response, and
wholesale market participation, since it has low emissions and can be
permitted to run 24/7.
Well beyond backup power, the Mainspring
product's fuel-flexibility and dispatchability - the ability to ramp
up and down quickly and complement the inherent variability of solar
and wind power - and easy siting and permitting (primarily driven by
their ultra-low emissions and inverter-based interconnection) gives
commercial, industrial, and utility customers alike unmatched
adaptability in making investments and moving towards decarbonizing
their operations. The products can run indefinitely when solar and
wind power are in flux, low, or unavailable, making them ideal for
firming renewables. In a zero-carbon power scenario, the 100% green
hydrogen and ammonia fuels are produced using solar or wind power and
stored in tanks until they are needed for power generation by linear
generators whenever and wherever required.
About Hydrogen and Ammonia
Hydrogen, or H2, when produced from
renewable sources, is particularly valuable from a climate change
perspective due to its viability across a broad range of applications
- power generation, heavy-duty transportation, heavy industry,
chemicals, and other "hard-to-decarbonize" sectors. Since significant
renewable penetration can mean curtailing, or "wasting" energy that's
not used when generated, green hydrogen presents an important method
to store and transport renewable energy for later use in other
locations, including in the form of green ammonia, in effect becoming
a transportable energy storage opportunity.
Ammonia, or NH3, is used widely in
agriculture, with more than 150 million metric tons of ammonia
produced globally each year. Though it is less well known as a fuel,
it has high potential for power generation applications, such as
replacing diesel backup generators, due to its higher energy density,
existing global distribution network, ease of storage, and function as
a hydrogen-carrier fuel. Liquid ammonia storage requires about 3x less
volume than compressed hydrogen storage for the same amount of energy.
It is easily piped, pumped, and stored at low pressure in inexpensive
tanks. Also, ammonia has an abundant global supply chain and
distribution infrastructure from its use as a fertilizer. Green
ammonia is made from green hydrogen.
Both hydrogen and ammonia today are
produced largely using traditional fossil fuel resources, but both
also can be produced using 100% renewable resources such as solar and
wind.
About Mainspring Energy
Driven by its vision of the low-cost,
reliable, zero carbon grid of the future, Mainspring is delivering a
breakthrough new category of power generation — the linear generator —
to leading commercial, industrial, and utility customers to increase
their energy resilience, generate cost savings, and meet their
sustainability and climate goals. Customers include Fortune 500
companies like Kroger and Lineage Logistics, as well as utilities like
PG&E, Florida Power and Light, and
others. Based in Menlo Park, Calif.,
Mainspring is backed by top-tier investors. For more information on
the company, technology, and products, please visit
www.mainspringenergy.com.
SOURCE Mainspring Energy, Inc.
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
exactrix@exactrix.com
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