Compressed air comes to fore as method of storing wind, solar energy - battery storage systems

In ancient Greece, a technology used to power the clock and cannon was being revived as a way to store the energy of wind turbines and solar panels.
Compressed air has been used to drive carnival rides, jack hammers and medical equipment to join the crowded field of innovation chasing $21.
By 2024, the market share was 5 billion.
Competitors include Elon Musk, Tesla's chairman, who launched a battery this month to store power for homes, businesses and utilities.
Tesla plans to start offering rechargeable Lithium
Ion model at the end of summer.
Read more: Tesla battery gamechanger: the vector chief battery includes: Tesla's ambitious game, but there may be an advantage to the compressed air storage system or CAES: the technology can store a lot of power for weeks at a price lower than the cost of the battery.
Jim Heid, vice president of Dresser, said: "You need bulk storage to support all renewable energy, and CAES is almost the only technology that can do this . "
Rand Group, supplier of compressed air products.
"It's a global phenomenon because all intermittent renewable energy is online.
"The mechanism is simple.
The power generated by wind turbines and solar panels fills the compressor with manpower
It is also used in caves where natural gas is stored.
When pressurized air is released, it drives the turbine, which provides clean power when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow.
According to Navigant Research, the annual investment in compressed air will reach nearly $5 billion in less than a decade.
This will support more than 11 gigawatts of installed capacity and help renewable energy developers meet demand and supply.
The competition is fierce.
In addition to the battery, developers are using a variety of things to store energy, from buckets filled with melted salt to roof cans filled with ice, and market navigation companies see about 35-
By 2024, it was folded from $605.
This year 8 million
Even supporters acknowledge the need to improve air storage.
According to Dresser-these systems only return about 60 of the electricity used to fill the caveRand.
"When you put in a unit of energy, you want to come up with a unit," said Sam Shelton, senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic Energy, Georgia Institute of Technology.
"The air is not very dense, so the compression storage efficiency is very low.
Economic problems.
"Technological advances will improve efficiency, eliminate the need to heat pressurized air with natural gas and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Developers are improving on it-
Small ground boats-
Scale applications.
"Overall, this is a market with several niche markets," said Brian Warshay, an analyst at New York Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
"It depends largely on the proximity of location and demand.
Two years ago, California regulators demanded one more of California's three major utility companies.
33 gigawatts of energy
Storage capacity by 2020
Excluding the pumping water and electricity system, it is about higher than the current level in the world.
Arbengoa in Spain is developing solar energy
California will be included in the thermal program for power storage.
Ice Energy Holdings in Santa Barbara, California-
S. -based companies are creating a storage method that uses roof ice to provide cooling during the day.
Greek inventor Ctesibius wrote about the study of compressed air Science in the third century BC.
The technology is used in the cannon of alarm clock and archery;
It is also used to open the gate of the Temple of Alexandria.
Due to its size, today's compressed air storage solves the problem of how to store wind power at night, a decline in power demand, and cloudy solar power.
Please also read: new cell phone battery-
Charging Tesla in less than a minute puts pressure on Japanese suppliers as it seeks battery partners. Compressed air can store hundreds of megawatts of electricity for several weeks at a time.
Batteries are useful for smaller volumes in less time, said Rocco Vita, emerging technology director at pipeline company Enbridge, which operates solar and wind farms in North America.
Chamisa Energy, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is seeking to raise about $0. 4 billion to build a compressed air project in Panhandle, Texas that can store wind Energy at night, and release wind energy when the turbine is still.
"We are surrounded by the best winds in America. S.
The wind often blows off-
Feng, "said Alissa Oppenheimer, general manager of Chamisa.
"There are countless times a day when the price of the wind is negative.
"Investors may not understand the advantages of the technology, or worry about the inefficiency of air storage systems, but they promise to be slow," Oppenheimer said. Dresser-
Head said Rand built one of the world's two commercial compressed air systems in Alabama in 1991 and is currently working on other projects in Texas.
In Alabama, 110 of the Southern power energy cooperative-
The MW system stores enough energy from nearby power plants to power 110,000 households.
In 1978, the technology was the first commercial application in the world in Germany, 290-megawatt plant.
In Canada, grid operators in Ontario want to add 16 megawatts of storage capacity, including CAES, to cope with a surge in supply of wind turbines and solar panels. NRStor Inc.
Companies that are bidding for contracts expect that the efficiency and cost of air storage will increase.
If Ontario increases its compressed air storage by 1,000 MW, consumers will save $8 billion ($6 ).
NRStor Chief Executive Annette Verschuren said the figure reached 6 billion in more than two decades.
With her proposed system, the stored air can turn the turbine for 300 hours.
"Ontario does accumulate a lot of renewable energy and is accumulating more surplus energy," said Verschuren . ".
"We will capture the night stuff, capture the weekend stuff, and put the energy on the electricity line in the day.
NRStor believes that the price of the compressed air system has dropped to 1-
Verschuren said the estimated storage cost per kilowatt hour battery in 2022 was $350, a tenth of that.
She declined to disclose the cost of the Ontario project.