CHASE

SPIRIT is a European Project, funded under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme, aiming at implementing sustainable heat-upgrade technologies for industry. SPIRIT will demonstrate three full-scale heat pumps in the food and beverage and paper & pulp industrial sectors, with three different technologies. The commercial availability of industrial heat pumps at medium-scale capacities (500 kW to 10 MW) is limited to supply temperatures of around 100°C, while prototypes have been demonstrated at temperatures of up to 160°C for selected applications. These prototypes have not yet proven to be capable of covering large market shares due to several reasons: technical challenges, too high investment cost and lack of distribution and service network. The technology readiness level of available cost-competitive technologies varies between 4 to 6, while some technologies were demonstrated at TRL 7, but are subject to too high investment cost.

CHESTER project aims at developing a cost competitive innovative system that will allow for energy management, storage and dispatchable supply of many different renewable energy sources (RES) through the combination of electricity and heat sector.  The innovative power-to-heat-to-power energy storage system – the so-called CHEST (Compressed Heat Energy Storage) –  will be combined with the Smart District Heating creating a very flexible smart renewable energy management system able to store electric energy with a round trip efficiency of 100% or even higher. The system is expected to be site-independent (unlike pumped hydro), cyclically stable (unlike batteries), able to convert power into heat, able to convert renewable low temperature heat into power and able to store and deliver independently from each other upon request both, heat and power.