The pilot project is hosted by SSE (Scottish & Southern Energy) at Slough Heat & Power. It has been commissioned for more than 18 months and runs on a regular basis exporting electricity to the National Grid. The system complies with all the regulations and inspections necessary to be allowed to connect to the grid (just like any other commercial generator).
Having commissioned and satisfactorily tested the power recovery unit, the liquefier was mechanically complete in early April 2011, with system pre-commissioning checks starting soon after. Liquid was produced during cold testing in early July and the performance guarantee tests performed two weeks later. The liquefier achieved its performance guarantee without cold recycle by which time it had already had more than 50+ hours of operation. The plant actually performed slightly better than design.
Locating the project on the Slough Heat & Power site provides the pilot unit access to a heat stream, thereby providing the opportunity to demonstrate the increase in power output from utilising heat from a co-located process.
The project was run in two phases:
Phase 1: the Cryo GenSet pilot demonstrator was commissioned for nine months running on a regular basis exporting electricity to the National Grid. The plant has now has been relocated adjacent to its original site.
Phase 2: the fully integrated Cryo Energy System. The high grade cold store was commissioned in mid-October 2011
