Glorinda’s services
Energy Storage
At Glorinda, we design and deliver hydrogen, thermal, battery, mechanical and pump-turbine storage systems that turn surplus or off-peak energy into supply you can call on when your site actually needs it: as electricity, as heat, or as fuel.
Energy Storage
Storage separates the moment energy is produced from the moment it is used. Every system does that in three parts: a charging path from the source, a medium that holds the energy for as long as the duty demands, and a discharge path that returns it in the form the load needs. The third part is where the families separate, and it is not negotiable, because the load decides it. Choosing between them is therefore an engineering question about your load, not a technology preference.
Your solution can be Energy Storage
"Our generation peaks when the site doesn't need it.".
What problem does it solve?
Storage has stopped being an add-on to a renewable project and become the component that decides whether the project is worth building at all. The decision belongs in the feasibility study, alongside the generation it exists to support. Size it afterwards and you are sizing it around choices already fixed: the inverter, the connection, the layout, the civils. Those are the choices that should have been made with the storage in view. Our engineering services cover exactly that stage.
Benefits
Time is the product
What you sell is not energy. It is the difference between the hour energy was cheap and the hour it was not.
Faster than any plant
Stored energy is available in milliseconds. Nothing that burns fuel can start, ramp and stop on that timescale. It is a different category of asset, not a quicker version of the same one.
The connection stops being the ceiling
Output above the export limit is held and released when the connection has room, and the reinforcement that would otherwise be needed can be deferred.
The peak you stop paying for
Discharging across the half-hours that set the demand charge lowers the billed peak, and lowers nothing else.
How it works
Each family is defined by the medium it stores energy in, and by what that medium demands of the plant built around it. In our photovoltaic systems the storing is done by batteries and hydrogen tanks; on concentrated solar power it is thermal.
Battery Energy Storage (BESS)
Cells, modules, a power conversion system and a controller, delivered in containerised units that scale by repetition rather than redesign. Thermal management, gas detection and suppression sit inside the enclosure, which is what lets a unit be sited without constructing a room for it first.
Because the response is electronic rather than mechanical, BESS is the family that delivers frequency response, voltage support and power quality correction.
The engineering that decides a BESS project is capacity fade. Cells lose usable energy with both age and use, so the plant is either oversized on day one or built to accept added modules later. Which of those is cheaper depends on the contract term, and it changes the layout, the civils and the electrical design, so it is settled at design stage.
Thermal Storage
Heat is held in molten salt across a two-tank arrangement: a cold tank feeds the collector field, and a hot tank receives what comes back. It is drawn on to raise steam later, when demand requires it. That is what overcomes the greatest weakness of solar thermal: a plant that stops the moment the sun comes off it.
The same principle serves industrial sites with a thermal load. Steam accumulators and hot media buffers absorb a batch process’s peaks, so the boiler is sized for the average rather than the maximum. Where cheap electricity is available, resistive or heat-pump charging puts electrical energy into the same store.
The constraint is temperature, not capacity. Salt must stay molten, which means trace heating, freeze protection and a start-up procedure that a purely electrical system does not have.
Hydrogen Storage
Electricity drives electrolysis, the gas is compressed, and it is held in pressure vessels. Unlike a charge, it does not decay while it waits, so a long hold costs storage volume instead of lost energy.
Because the medium is a molecule, it can be trucked, piped or shipped. That is the property no other family has: the stored energy can leave the site.
The round trip back to electricity is expensive. Electrolysis, compression and reconversion each take their share. A hydrogen business case is therefore built on the value of the gas itself, not on the value of the kilowatt-hour it could be turned back into.
Mechanical Storage
Energy held as motion or pressure: flywheels, compressed air, raised mass. The medium does not degrade chemically, so the limits are bearings, seals and vessels. That is wear which shows up on inspection long before it becomes a failure.
Failure modes are mechanical rather than thermal, which changes what the plant costs to insure. Energy density is lower than the chemical families, so the footprint is larger for the same stored energy; where land is available and cycle count is high, that trade is usually worth making.
Pump-Turbine Storage
Water raised to an upper reservoir and released back through reversible pump-turbine sets, which pump on charge and generate on discharge. It remains the most cost-effective form of large-scale storage where the topography allows it, and the asset life is measured in generations rather than contract terms.
The cost sits in civils and consents, not in equipment, and the site either exists or it does not, because head and volume cannot be engineered around. Where they are present, the same engineering that delivers our hydropower projects delivers the scheme.
Which Mini LNG solution suits your needs?
Selecting a train configuration is an engineering decision, not a purchasing one. We characterise the gas source, run feasibility and pre-feasibility studies, compare routes on capital and operating cost, and act as owner’s engineer while somebody else builds it if that suits you better.
Typical usages
- Retrofit of storage to a generating plant already in service
- Microgrid supply on sites with no grid connection at all
- Black-start capability for a plant that currently depends on an external supply
- Phased or pilot installation ahead of a full investment decision
- Systems sized to a specific capacity-market or flexibility product
Where mini LNG is used
Mini LNG is sized to the gas source and the offtake it needs to serve, and it applies wherever gas needs to move without a pipeline connecting the two ends.
Oil, gas and petrochemical
Power generation
Agriculture and agro-processing
Municipal
Mining
Marine and heavy transport
Remote industrial and manufacturing sites
Four questions settle most of it
How long?
Minutes and hours point to batteries. Days point to pumped or thermal. Weeks and seasons point to hydrogen.
How often?
Daily cycling rewards high round-trip efficiency and long cycle life, and will pay for both. Occasional deep discharge rewards neither.
What comes out?
If the load is heat, store heat, because converting twice to get back to heat throws away the difference. If the load is a fuel or a feedstock, hydrogen. If it is electricity, everything is in play.
What can the site operate safely?
The best technical answer that your team cannot maintain is the wrong answer.
How it works
A storage system is specified against the system it joins, and no two of those are alike. Our role adapts to the project strategy, acting as EPC or EPCM partner, engineering and procurement partner, or owner’s technical representative.
01
Load and profile characterisation
Measured load and generation profiles at interval resolution across a full year, the tariff structure, the limits written into the connection agreement, and the events the system is expected to ride through.
02
Duty cycle modelling and sizing
The proposed duty is simulated against those profiles. Power rating and energy capacity are sized separately, because a system that can deliver the megawatts is not automatically one that can deliver them for long enough.
03
Safety case and consents
Hazard analysis, ventilation, separation distances and enclosure rating, documented in the form the permitting authority and the insurer each ask for.
04
Procurement and vendor engagement
Cells, converters, transformers, electrolysers, tanks, exchangers, turbines and control systems, sourced through structured RFQ management, bid evaluation and negotiation.
05
Engineering integration
Process, mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, control and civil interfaces coordinated across every supplier to a single design basis.
06
Construction, commissioning and support
On-site technical supervision, pre-commissioning, start-up, performance verification against the modelled duty, operator training and after-sales support.
Frequently asked questions
Systems are developed under the Glorinda brand and manufactured by qualified OEM partners, with us controlling specification, quality control and integration. The same arrangement applies across our product range.
Frequently, and it is often the cheaper answer. A fast unit alongside a slower bulk medium lets each be specified for the job it is actually doing, instead of buying one system large enough to cover both and using most of it badly.
Not the nameplate figure. Auxiliary loads such as thermal management, conversion at part load and standby are what separate the datasheet from the meter, and they grow as the duty moves away from the conditions the figure was measured under. Treat the number in any quotation as the best case, and ask what it degrades to at your duty.
Energy efficiency and recovery solutions and renewable energy projects are eligible project types under the German authority-backed framework, for total project values between €20 million and €350 million. Storage attached to such a project is assessed as part of it.
Take this further
Send us the stream data, the discharge limit or the equipment list you are working from. An engineer reads every enquiry and replies with the questions that actually decide the solution, not a brochure.