Carnot Batteries and the Decarbonization of Coal Fired Power Plants

The presentation will give an overview of the state-of-the-art of this technology and summarize existing and future demonstration projects.
About this Event

Synopsis: The cost-efficient storage of electricity at the scale of gigawatt hours is a grand challenge of energy research. In the first part of the presentation an emerging technology – Carnot-Batteries – for electricity storage are introduced. A Carnot-Battery transforms electricity into heat, stores the heat using abundant and inexpensive storage materials like molten salts or natural stones and converts the heat back to electricity using steam or gas turbines. The presentation will give an overview of the state-of-the-art of this technology and summarize existing and future demonstration projects that are currently underway. In the second part of the presentation the decarbonization of coal-fired power plants by converting them in to thermal storage power plants (TSPP) will be discussed. In particular, the “Global Coal Atlas” project of the German Aerospace Center DLR will be discussed. In this project the global fleet of approximately 6000 coal power plants is analysed and customized concepts for their retrofit are developed. The presentation will include economic aspects and a brief reference to the German energy policy.

André Thess (born 22. February 1964) is Professor of Energy Storage at the University of Stuttgart. His research fields are high-temperature technologies, energy storage and energy systems modelling. His particular interests are high-temperature heat pumps, the simulation of energy systems from the microscale to the macroscale and the development of Carnot-Batteries. Professor Thess’s book “The Entropy Principle – Thermodynamics for the Unsatisfied” has contributed to the improvement of teaching methods in undergraduate Engineering Thermodynamics. Professor Thess is currently teaching “Thermodynamics of Energy Storage Systems” (in the winter term) and “Culinary Thermodynamics” (in the summer term). Culinary Thermodynamics is the first course at a German University that gives an evidence-based scientific proof of the superiority of home-made food over convenience food.

André Thess received his PhD (summa cum laude) in Theoretical Physics from Dresden University of Technology in 1991. From 1991 to 1993 he carried out post-doctoral research at Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon (France), at Institut de Mécanique de Grenoble (France) and was a post-doctoral fellow of the German Science Foundation (DFG) at Princeton University (USA). At the age of 34 years he was appointed as a Professor of Engineering Thermdynamics in 1998 at Ilmenau University of Technology. André Thess was visiting Professor at the University of Nagoya (Japan), at Stanford University (USA) and at Northeastern University Shenyang (China) and was awarded the Research Prize of the State of Thuringia in 2007. Professor Thess is a member of Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI), of the German Aerospace Society (DGLR), of the German Physics Society (DPG) and lifetime member of the American Physical Society (APS). He served as a member of the bureau of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (IUTAM) and as a board member of the GAMM. He has been member of the scientific board (Fachkollegium) of the German Science Foundation DFG from 2008 to 2016 and has served as a Chairman of the Research Training Group “Lorentz Force Velocimetry and Lorentz Force Eddy Current Testing” at Ilmenau Unviersity of Technology from 2010 to 2013. André Thess is married and has two sons.

In addition to his professional duties André Thess is a successful science communicator, contributing regularly to German news magazines and interviews on YouTube. His German energy-policy books “Sieben Energiewendemärchen?” (2000) and “Der Energiegipfel” (2025) have repeatedly reached number one on the Amazon bestseller list in the field energy technology and energy policy.