Progress comes straight from the Stone Age. Although it may seem a contradiction in terms, in the province of Arezzo, precisely in Cavriglia, a revolutionary thermoelectric plant has just been inaugurated, capable of accumulating heat and energy in the rocks, which are then used to heat water from which to generate steam to produce electricity. The plant, whose technology is called Thermal Energy Storage (TES), is located in the Santa Barbara plant, for years the largest in Italy. The idea stems from a synergy between Enel and the Israeli startup Brenmiller, who worked together to develop the project: the first took care of installing TES in the Santa Barbara plant, the second of developing the storage system. The system, which generates energy in a completely sustainable way and is therefore able to accelerate the energy transition, can be used to store excess energy produced from renewable sources in the form of heat to offer decarbonisation services to industrial customers and to integrate long-term storage solutions with renewable plants.
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