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Title: CAES/UPH hybrid plant design study. Phase I

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6702470· OSTI ID:6702470

In spite of the technical and economic feasibility of Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) and Underground Pumped Storage (UPH), there appears to be several barriers to their implementation and commercialization. These potential barriers include: large installed capacity is required to bring UPH plant economics into a favorable position and CAES requires consumption of petroleum distillate or natural gas. This study was undertaken to investigate means to remove these barriers by: identifying and evaluating the potential benefits that might be achieved by combining UPH, CAES and other related processes, and developing potential combination designs incorporating these benefits to determine their technical and economical feasibility. The development of specific UPH, CAES, and hybrid UPH/CAES concepts are discussed and evaluated. The results of the work performed to date show that development of conventional CAES and UPH design configurations is proceeding rapidly. The direction of this development will probably eventually result in a range of large scale energy storage plant types that will be attractive to electric utilities. However, the rate of development may be unacceptably slow for some of these variants to assist in effective reduction of distillate oil consumption for peaking power. It is recommended that an acceleration of the development rate of coal-fired CAES and adiabatic CAES concepts be organized. These two concepts, if adopted by electric utilities, could make a substantial contribution to the nation's effort to reduce oil imports. (LCL)

Research Organization:
Acres American, Inc., Columbia, MD (US)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-80RA50439
OSTI ID:
6702470
Report Number(s):
DOE/RA/50439-T1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English