Meeting future grid demand without sacrificing reliability
Author: Jon Norman
Hydrostor is entering a new phase of growth as we advance two flagship projects and a 7 GW pipeline across three continents. This momentum reflects accelerating market demand and a global urgency for long‑duration energy storage (LDES).
Electricity demand is rising at a pace not seen in decades, driven largely by electrification as well as the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and the data centers required to support it. The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that global data center electricity demand will grow from 460 TWh in 2024, to 1300 TWh in 2035.
To meet this emerging reality, the grid will need firm, flexible, and truly dispatchable resources that can balance both legacy and new generation sources, optimize intermittent renewables, and respond to increasingly steep load ramps.
Our advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) technology is engineered for exactly this purpose. Its ability to deliver affordable, multi-hour energy storage that doesn’t degrade over time makes it a critical asset for enhancing system reliability and ensuring stable operation as electricity demand continues to grow. Most critically, A-CAES can be flexibly sited where the grid requires it, unlocking global applicability. Our current pipeline is therefore just the first step and focused on markets where there is an immediate and strong need for LDES as well as supportive policies.
With attractive market environments for LDES emerging rapidly across multiple regions around the world, A-CAES is poised to be a critical reliability and storage resource globally with nearly unlimited deployment potential.
Against this backdrop of accelerating demand, our Silver City (located in Broken Hill, NSW) and Willow Rock (located in Kern County) projects are moving closer to construction, bringing hundreds of MWs of reliable 8-hour storage to California and New South Wales. These projects are under advanced development and poised to start construction in the next year.
But deploying our projects offers more than grid benefits. The sheer size of A-CAES plants and their construction means thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions in local investment and economic growth come to the communities we operate within. A typical project provides upwards of $500 million in community benefits and supports thousands of jobs over the course of construction. A-CAES is major infrastructure that requires local content to build and relies primarily on local supply chains and construction.
Our commitment to meeting the urgent need for long-duration energy storage extends far beyond our current projects. We are actively advancing a 7 GW pipeline across additional regions that demonstrate strong grid need and offer the right environment that is suitable for LDES deployment.
Our expanding portfolio means we can deliver meaningful, system level impact where it’s needed most. All projects provide a minimum of 8 hours of storage duration, with low-cost expansion opportunities to 16-24 hours per project where the market requires it.
In Ontario, the province is anticipating a capacity shortfall of 12-15 GW by 2035, and a 75 percent increase in demand by 2050. This will require large-scale LDES to support reliability and to fully integrate energy from the province’s substantial nuclear base as well as increasing levels of intermittent renewable capacity. We are currently advancing two sites in parallel for development in the vicinity of the Lennox generating station, with the initial phase targeting 500 MW of capacity and subsequent phases targeting up to an additional 1,500 MW.
In California, escalating energy targets underscore the growing need for substantial LDES resources to manage steep-net load ramps and provide firming capacity for the state’s increasingly solar-heavy grid. This demand has been a major driver behind our near-shovel-ready 500 MW Willow Rock project, but California, a state of nearly 40-million people, will require far more LDES to maintain reliability. To help meet this need, we are developing a second 500 MW project in Southern California, the Chronos Energy Storage Center, which is slated to interconnect with the CAISO system through the Cluster 15 process, as well as another 500 MW potential project in Southern Kern County.
In Arizona, the grid is experiencing rapid load growth driven by population expansion, data center and AI load, and electrification. We are nearing advanced development of a 500 MW project in Maricopa County that can respond to Arizona’s reliability needs and projected demand growth, in addition to other potential projects across the state.
In New York, we are engaged in early-stage development activities, working with local officials and stakeholders, in New York’s Lewis County. We are actively advancing a 500 MW project and have submitted into NYSERDA’s long-duration procurement to help New York meet its long duration energy storage targets.
In Nevada and Virginia, we are in the early stages of establishing commercial pathways for the development of multiple 500 MW projects. We continue to engage on early-stage development activities, including geological assessments, siting and interconnection assessments, to be able to respond to the evolving LDES needs in these and surrounding states.
In New South Wales, Australia, pressure on the grid is building due to increased renewable penetration as NSW progresses through its Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap (EIR). Firming capacity is urgently needed to maintain reliability and stabilize the National Electricity Market (NEM). In addition to our near-shovel ready Silver City project, we are engaged and actively working with local stakeholders in Wellington, NSW, to advance a 500 MW project that will help NSW meet its energy storage targets. This is in addition to another 500 MW project that can respond to future EIR needs associated with its long-term contracting programs for LDES.
In South Australia, we are seeking to develop a 500 MW project in the Cultana/Whyalla region and are working closely with the government to assist the state in meeting its reliability standards and form a long-term basis of LDES underpinning a future hydrogen hub.
In Victoria, Australia, we are advancing two 500 MW early-stage development opportunities in western and south-west Victoria, in response to the Australian state’s 95 percent renewable energy target by 2035.
In the United Kingdom and Scotland, system flexibility and energy security are driving the need for up to 10 GW of LDES by 2035. We are actively engaging with regulators and utilities to develop a 500 MW project in either region over the near-term, with longer-term deployment opportunity of multiple thousands of MWs across the country.
Engineered for this moment
Around the world, grid operators and major energy users are facing the same pressures: peak demand is accelerating, renewable generation is expanding faster than firming resources, transmission constraints are tightening, and reliability requirements are rising. These converging factors are creating an urgent need for long-duration, dispatchable storage solutions that can operate at true grid-scale.
A-CAES is purpose-built for this moment. It delivers more than eight hours of cost-effective storage, offers a 50-year asset life with zero capacity degradation, and benefits from highly flexible siting enabled by proven underground cavern development. A-CAES can also add duration once operational at a significantly low marginal cost, allowing an operational A-CAES system to expand to meet evolving market needs – scaling with demand without requiring major reinvestment or down-time, by-passing long interconnection queues or requiring significantly new infrastructure.
Our global development pipeline reflects a clear shift in the market: grid operators, large energy users, and utilities now view LDES as essential to enabling system-wide growth, decarbonization, and reliability. Hydrostor is developing the next generation of grid-scale storage. The world is ready for it.
Hydrostor – Director of External Communications