Saline Cavern Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage Using Sand as Heat Storage Material

Abstract

Adiabatic compressed air energy storage systems offer large energy storage capacities and power outputs beyond 100 MWel. Salt production in Austria produces large caverns which are able to hold pressure up to 100 bar, thus providing low cost pressurized air storage reservoirs for adiabatic compressed air energy storage plants. In this paper the results of a feasibility study is presented, which was financed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, with the objective to determine the adiabatic compressed air energy storage potential of Austria's salt caverns. The study contains designs of realisable plants with capacities between 10 and 50 MWel, applying a high temperature energy storage system currently developed at the Institute for Energy Systems and Thermodynamics in Vienna. It could be shown that the overall storage potential of Austria's salt caverns exceeds a total of 4 GWhel in the year 2030 and, assuming an adequate performance of the heat exchanger, that a 10 MWel adiabatic compressed air energy storage plant in Upper Austria is currently feasible using state of the art thermal turbomachinery which is able to provide a compressor discharge temperature of 400 °C.