Beyond Lithium, Part 1: Hydrostor’s Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage

As the transition to renewable energy accelerates, longer-duration storage solutions are increasingly essential to provide reliability during extended peak demand periods, multi-day weather events, and seasonal variations—needs that are often uneconomical or technically challenging for lithium-ion battery systems to meet alone.

Clean Energy Group’s “Beyond Lithium” webinar series spotlights the emerging energy storage technologies that are expanding the grid’s capabilities beyond today’s lithium-ion batteries. Each session in the series features a leading non–lithium-ion storage company, offering a practical look at how their systems work, where they are being deployed, and how they compare on performance, cost, scalability, safety, and supply chain considerations. Participants gain insight into the potential benefits, barriers, commercialization timelines, and policy frameworks shaping this evolving market.

This session explores Hydrostor, an advanced compressed air energy storage company that has projects currently in development across the United States, Canada, and Australia, including a 500 megawatt / 4,000 megawatt-hour system being deployed in Kern County, California. Hydrostor’s Senior Manager of Regulatory Affairs, Manuel Esquivel, gives an overview of their technology and answer questions from attendees. Clean Energy Group President and Executive Director Seth Mullendore moderates.

Watch this webinar to better understand how diversifying storage technologies can strengthen grid resilience, advance energy affordability, and accelerate an equitable clean energy transition.