Maltese researchers have won a top international prize for innovation after they created an environmentally friendly battery which assists offshore renewable energy plants in maintaining their output.

The Hydro-Pneumatic Energy Storage solution (HPES), developed by FLASC B.V., a spin-off company founded through the University of Malta, won the Best Innovation Award at this year’s edition of Offshore Energy 2020, an annual mega conference that brings together the offshore energy industry’s biggest players.

Judges praised FLASC B.V.’s “simple and elegant” concept that addresses a crucial challenge – the mismatch between intermittent renewable energy supply and consumer demand – with a sustainable solution.

“This event is like the Champions League of offshore energy,” FLASC B.V. CEO Daniel Buhagiar told Times of Malta.

“Last year, Siemens won this award, so it’s not a climate where startups have an easy time getting noticed.”

Originally conceived as part of Buhagiar’s PhD research five years ago, HPES uses seawater and compressed air to store energy offshore and is compact enough to be incorporated into the energy structure’s existing footprint.

The battery is also made from safe and sustainable material and can last for up to 25 years.

Some offshore wind farms in the North Sea have already implemented the technology.

Buhagiar explained that one of the significant challenges of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind farms, is that the resource does not always match the demand.

“If you are depending on the wind for example, sometimes you may generate too much and at other times too little. But the wind is a phenomenon, you can’t have it on demand, so the challenge is then directed to energy storage,” he said.

HPES can be installed at the source of a wind farm and is able to store the excess energy when production outnumbers demand, and supplement it at times when production is low and unable to keep up.

“This started as a University project. We should reject this notion that academic ideas go into a thesis and then sit on a shelf gathering dust forever.

“There are so many things that can be developed into something that can do good in society,” he said.

Buhagiar, together with engineers Tonio Sant and Robert Farrugia, developed the technology at the University of Malta and in 2017 installed a prototype of the device at the Grand Harbour.

The prototype campaign was supported by Medserv plc and received financial support from the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCST), Malta Marittima, and the University of Malta’s Research Innovation and Development Trust (RIDT).

Subsequently, the University set up a spin-off company in the Netherlands, a key location in the offshore industry, to facilitate the commercialisation of the research.

The Maltese technology has to date been patented in Europe, the United States, China and Japan and is currently partnered with underwater engineering and construction company Subsea 7 to further develop FLASC HPES’s commercial applications.

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