THE SUN provides clean, renewable energy, but the challenge facing the solar power industry is storage of the generated electricity. Swedish company Azelio has a solution: combining solar and thermal energy. The breakthrough technology takes a readily available, cost-effective and energy-dense material — molten aluminium alloy — to store heat from a feathered array of solar panels. The stored thermal energy can then be converted into electricity using Stirling engines that use cyclic compression and expansion of the working fluid at different temperatures for a net conversion of heat energy into mechanical work.The scalable solution features a modular design for practical set-up and distribution. The BV judging panel recognises this as an exceptional feat of engineering, and declares Azelio as the winner of the 2020 award for Best Sustainable Energy Storage Solutions (Nordics).
