Nostromo technology review. Nostromo is a public company, founded in 2016, with c40 employees in Israel and California. Website here. It is commercializing a thermal energy storage system, which integrates with AC, to store coolness (e.g., during peak wind/solar generation), then re-release the coolness at ‘peakload’, (e.g., in mid-late afternoon, or after sunset).
The flagship product is called ‘IceBrick’, a modular, water-based energy storage cell, which can be retro-fitted onto most commercial buildings in about 4-6 months. It claims 86-92% round-trip energy efficiency, 94% depth of discharge over 4-hours and <1% degradation over 20-years.
We have reviewed the company’s patents on our usual patent framework. Nostromo’s patent library is concentrated, but it scores highly on our framework, as it lays out specific challenges that have hampered other designs, very specific details on how Nostromo’s system improves efficiency and consistency, and the patent library is also easy-to-understand, focused and considers deployments.
The technology is an exciting alternative and complement to lithium ion batteries for energy storage, or more specifically demand shifting. It may be particularly well-suited to commercial buildings in hot climates, where AC can comprise 50% of peakload power generation, per our note here. The main challenge is system costs, explored in the data-file and compared with lithium cells and lithium battery storage. Finally, we think there may be other applications of phase change materials that do not simply accomplish energy storage, but also reductions in total energy consumption (note here).
Full details of our Nostromo technology review can be downloaded in our data-file below.
Further conclusions are linked in the recent article sent out to our distribution list, here.