Nostromo's Cold Thermal Storage IceBrick Project Gains $305.5M DOE Loan Guarantee
A company developing a new form of cold thermal energy storage already celebrated by a branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) now has access to funding which will allow it to deploy the technology at nearly 200 commercial buildings across California by the end of the decade.
Nostromo Energy, thanks to the conditional commitment of a $305.5 million loan guarantee by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) earlier this month, will be able to deploy its Project IceBrick cold thermal storage technology on a wider scale for the first time.
If finalized, the loan will finance installation of IceBrick systems at up to 193 commercial buildings over five years. The 1,400-kWh IceBrick Innovation Center deployed at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills recently was honored as an Outstanding Energy Project by the Los Angeles Branch of the ASCE.
Nostromo’s IceBrick cold thermal storage contains modules which can store cold energy by freezing water into ice through Nostromo’s proprietary process. The cold storage energy then is available to discharge into a building’s circulating chilled water, avoiding energy-intensive chillers.
This can reduce energy consumption by the facilities, according to the company. Commercial buildings account for nearly 75% of the overall commercial sector energy use, according to federal statistics.
Project Icebrick also will be virtual power plant (VPP) technology-enabled to make saved energy available for deployment on the larger grid during times of peak demand. VPPs utilize an intelligent control system and bidirectional technology to aggregate energy from networked resources located at multiple sites, bundling together what could be hundreds of discrete power sources into one during times of peak demand, just as a centralized power plant would.
"We're excited to help fulfill the vision of the DOE and LPO to make VPPs a key resource of the modern grid by serving up to 20% of its peak loads and making power more secure, affordable and clean," said Yoram Ashery, CEO of Nostromo Energy. "This project will benefit not only commercial buildings, but also electricity consumers in general, create hundreds of good paying domestic jobs, and reduce emissions from gas peaker plants which mostly impact disadvantaged communities around them."
IceBrick storage cells are manufactured entirely in the U.S. from partially recycled materials, according to Nostromo Energy.
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