Efficiency of Compressed Air Energy Storage

Brian Elmegaard, Wiebke Brix

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

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Abstract

The simplest type of a Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) facility would be an adiabatic process consisting only of a compressor, a storage and a turbine, compressing air into a container when storing and expanding when producing. This type of CAES would be adiabatic and would if the machines were reversible have a storage efficiency of 100%. However, due to the specific capacity of the storage and the construction materials the air is cooled during and after compression in practice, making the CAES process diabatic. The cooling involves exergy losses and thus lowers the efficiency of the storage significantly. The efficiency of CAES as an electricity storage may be defined in several ways, we discuss these and find that the exergetic efficiency of compression, storage and production together determine the efficiency of CAES. In the paper we find that the efficiency of the practical CAES electricity storage is 25-45% and thus has a quite low efficiency, which is close to the efficiency of the simple diabatic CAES-process. Adiabatic CAES would reach significantly higher storage efficiency about 70-80%.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe 24th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems : The 2011 conference motto: International Smart Energy Networks of Cooperation for Sustainable Development
Publication date2011
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Event24th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization,Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems - Novi Sad, Serbia
Duration: 4 Jul 2011 → 7 Jul 2011
Conference number: 24

Conference

Conference24th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization,Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems
Number24
CountrySerbia
CityNovi Sad
Period04/07/2011 → 07/07/2011

Keywords

  • Exergy analysis
  • Electricity storage
  • Compressed Air Energy Storage

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    Cite this

    Elmegaard, B., & Brix, W. (2011). Efficiency of Compressed Air Energy Storage. In The 24th International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems: The 2011 conference motto: International Smart Energy Networks of Cooperation for Sustainable Development