Commercialization of compressed air energy storage

Will China's first large-scale compressed air energy storage project be commercialized?

A state-backed consortium is constructing China’s first large-scale compressed air energy storage (CAES) project using a fully artificial underground cavern, marking a major step in the technology’s commercialization.

What is compressed air energy storage (CAES)?

Among the different ES technologies, compressed air energy storage (CAES) can store tens to hundreds of MW of power capacity for long-term applications and utility-scale. The increasing need for large-scale ES has led to the rising interest and development of CAES projects.

How can compressed air energy storage improve the stability of China's power grid?

The intermittent nature of renewable energy poses challenges to the stability of the existing power grid. Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) that stores energy in the form of high-pressure air has the potential to deal with the unstable supply of renewable energy at large scale in China.

What factors influence the commercialization of CAES?

However, the relatively low density of compressed air results in a low energy storage density of CAES, and thus the compressed air storage space required for large-scale energy storage is enormous. The high cost and geographic constraints of large-scale air storage have become the most critical factors influencing the commercialization of CAES.

What is diabatic compressed air energy storage (D-CAES)?

Since the compression heat is wasted by air cooling, and fuel combustion is required to heat the compressed air at the inlet of the expander, it is defined as diabatic compressed air energy storage (D-CAES). The cycle efficiency of D-CAES is around 50% . Fig. 1. Different types of CAES (a) diabatic CAES and (b) adiabatic CAES.

Which energy storage technology is most suitable for large-scale energy storage?

Among the available energy storage technologies, Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) has proved to be the most suitable technology for large-scale energy storage, in addition to PHES .