Current research and development trend of compressed air energy storage

Abstract

Power generation from renewable energy has become more important due to the increase of electricity demand and pressure on tough emission reduction target. This has brought great impact on grid reliable operation. Wind curtailment often happens when grid can not accommodate more wind power. Various solutions are under investigation and energy storage (ES) is one of the recognized potential ways forward. Among all the ES technologies, Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) has demonstrated its unique merit in terms of scale, sustainability, low maintenance and long life time. The paper is to provide an overview of the current research trends in CAES and also update the technology development.

An updated review of energy storage systems: Classification and applications in distributed generation power systems incorporating renewable energy resources

“…The limited exposure of this technology and suitable geological locations are the prime constraints in the development of CAES technology. Nevertheless, CAES technology is currently attracting much interest as can be seen from Table that gives the information of the existing and some of the proposed CAESs in the world …”

“…During compression, the temperature of air reaches a very high value which in a way makes it impossible to process and store the air at that temperature necessitating removal of that heat before storage of compressed air. In conventional CAES, this heat is discarded into the atmosphere, therefore requiring a second injection of heat prior to reexpansion, while AA‐CAES, instead of dumping the heat in environment, utilizes thermal energy storage system (TES) to store it separately, and then, the same heat is reinjected at the time of expansion, which substantially increases (almost doubles) the roundtrip efficiency of the system …”

“…Nevertheless, CAES technology is currently attracting much interest as can be seen from Table 2 that gives the information of the existing and some of the proposed CAESs in the world. [44][45][46][47][48] In order to overcome the technical bottleneck in conventional CAES, the researchers are developing new technologies by using different working fluids and their states, improving thermal cycle, and putting different technologies together such as advance adiabatic CAES (AA-CAES), liquid air energy storage (LAES), supercritical CAES (SC-CAES), small-scale CAES (SS-CAES), underwater CAES (UWCAES), and isothermal CAES (I-CAES). The AA-CAES-a new concept-is put forth by researchers with an objective of increasing the efficiency of CAES.…”

“…In conventional CAES, this heat is discarded into the atmosphere, therefore requiring a second injection of heat prior to reexpansion, while AA-CAES, instead of dumping the heat in environment, utilizes thermal energy storage system (TES) to store it separately, and then, the same heat is reinjected at the time of expansion, which substantially increases (almost doubles) the roundtrip efficiency of the system. 17,44,50 Another development in CAES technology is LAES, with an objective of increasing the energy storage density. 51,52 In LAES, liquefied air or nitrogen is used as a storage medium which is brought in liquid form by cooling it down and storing in storage tank when excess energy is available.…”

Two-level reconfiguration algorithm of branch exchange and variable neighbourhood search for active distribution network

“…In summary, the above traditional reconfiguration algorithms cannot easily balance the computing speed and the quality of solutions. With the continuous development of the economy and society, a growing number of distributed generations (DG) have been connected to the smart distribution network (Wang et al, 2017). Bai, Yiango, Dani, & Chris (2016), Nikolaos, Dimitris, Pavlos, and Nikos, (2017) and Xing and Sun, (2017) had proved that DG can reduce cost and improve the delivered power quality as well as system reliability.…”