compressed air

Researchers in the United Arab Emirates have compared the performance of compressed air storage and lead-acid batteries in terms of energy stored per cubic meter, costs, and payback period. They found the former has a considerably lower Capex and a payback time of only two years.

Scientists in Poland have developed a compressed air energy storage technology using a thermal energy storage (TES) system built into a disused mine shaft. The system works without external heat sources, and utilizes an air compressor, a compressed air reservoir with a built-in thermal energy storage system, and an air expander.

Huaneng Group has finished building a 300 MWh storage project in Changzhou, in China’s Jiangsu province. The state-owned company has already started operating the facility, which is situated in a salt cavern.

US researchers have proposed the use of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells to store renewable energy via compressed natural gas, with the levelized cost of storage potentially coming in at $70/MWh and $270/MWh. They said wells could also be used to store other renewable gases such as carbon dioxide or hydrogen in the future.

The plant would be able to deliver 400 MW of electricity for 8 hours, and would be comparable in size to some of California’s largest fossil fuel power plants.

Israel-based Augwind has built its first 250 kW/1 MWh compressed air storage system for the collective community of Yahel, in the southern, desert part of the country. The commercial scale facility will be connected to a PV system and will be used for behind-the-meter services.

Compressed air energy storage is not exactly a new technology, but recent months have seen it get a new lease on life, as intermittent renewable sources of energy come to the fore.

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) may become an interesting solution for countries with weak interconnection with their neighbors, according to scientists from Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT). North America and sub-Saharan Africa were found to have the largest portion of suitable areas for this kind of storage technology, and Western Canada in particular, to have the world’s strongest potential.

Two projects in California will fill part of the 1,600 MW of long-duration energy storage that state regulators have said is needed by 2026.

Augwind CEO Or Yogev recently spoke to pv magazine about the Israeli company’s new storage solution for the renewables sector. The underground compressed-air storage specialist recently secured 166 MWh of capacity in Israel’s latest solar+storage tender, and plans to take equity stakes in all five projects.