Utilization of compressed air energy storage through renewable energy sources

Abstract

Renewable energy such as wind solar tidal and wave only produces electricity intermittently and with low power and energy density thus nondispatch able and difficult to use at large scales as the modern society requires That is why many renewable energy technologies are lacking the economies of scale which reduces their competitiveness and delays the transition to a low carbon economy Therefore economic solutions to bulk energy storage are urgently needed in order for renewable energy to take a significant share in the total energy mix Most energy storage systems are expensive either in terms of energy losses incurred in storing and retrieving the energy For example batteries are costly fly wheels are suitable for short duration storage only The compressed air energy storage systemCAES besides pumpedhydro is the only conceivable technology able to provide the very large scale energy storage deliverability above 100MW in single unit sizes while free from adverse environmental effects of pumpedhydro Hence CAES has recently received lots of attention and it has been recently proposed that large scale solarCAES and windCAES deployment can enable renewable energy to compete against coalfired electricity generation In CAES a source energy is stored in the form of highly pressurized air in underground rock caverns and the compressed air is released through turbines to generate electricity when needed