What is compressed air energy storage (CAES)?

1. Introduction Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) has emerged as one of the most promising large-scale energy storage technologies for balancing electricity supply and demand in modern power grids. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, despite their many benefits, are inherently intermittent.

When was compressed air energy storage invented?

By then the patent application “Means for Storing Fluids for Power Generation” was submitted by F.W. Gay to the US Patent Office . However, until the late 1960s the development of compressed air energy storage (CAES) was pursued neither in science nor in industry.

How is compressed air stored?

Compressed air storage Compressed air can be stored either at constant volume (isochoric) or at constant pressure (isobaric). In case of constant volume storage, the pressure varies and thus indicates the state of charge. The most common example of isochoric storage is a steel pressure vessel or, at large scale, a salt cavern.

How to reuse temperature related exergy of compressed air?

The simplest way to reuse the temperature related part of the exergy of the compressed air is to store the hot air itself inside a combined thermal energy and compressed air storage volume (Fig. 18a). Due to the high temperatures already reached at rather low pressure ratios these concepts require highly temperature resistant storage volumes.

Can compressed air energy storage improve the profitability of existing power plants?

Linden Svd, Patel M. New compressed air energy storage concept improves the profitability of existing simple cycle, combined cycle, wind energy, and landfill gas power plants. In: Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo 2004: Power for Land, Sea, and Air; 2004 Jun 14–17; Vienna, Austria. ASME; 2004. p. 103–10. F. He, Y. Xu, X. Zhang, C. Liu, H. Chen

Can compressed air be used as a storage medium?

Nevertheless, compressed air has been and still is applied as a storage medium for electrical energy at utility scale. Fig. 1 shows projects and R&D efforts over time, which will be described in detail later on.