Compressed Air Energy Storage Makes a Comeback
By Martin LaMonica
Posted 12 Sep 2013 | 18:57 GMT
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Conventional compressed-air energy storage uses a compressor to pressurize air and pump it into underground geological formations. The first two plants of this type put into operation?one in McIntosh, Alabama in 1991, and the other in Huntorf, Germany in 1978?use salt caverns as storage tanks, pumping compressed air in at night, when energy demand is lowest. During the day, the air is released, heated with natural gas, and forced through a turbine to generate power. The appeal of this technology is that it?s relatively low cost and can store many kilowatt-hours of energy.
SustainX takes a different tack: it uses compressed air as the energy storage medium, but holds the air in large pipes, the same used in natural gas pipelines. That means utilities or even commercial customers could place a storage device in a range of industrial locations, rather than only where there?s an underground formation available....
