Comments on: For Base-Load Wind Cheaper than Fossil Fuels: CAES

By: California Gets Smart-Grid Funds to Bottle Wind : CleanTechnica

California Gets Smart-Grid Funds to Bottle Wind : CleanTechnica — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:18:32 +0000

[…] utility planned (previous story) to build 300 MW of compressed-air energy storage that will enable Californians to get more clean […]

By: Storing Renewable Energy in Boxes of Air :HUMACON

Storing Renewable Energy in Boxes of Air :HUMACON — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:57:38 +0000

[…] are looking into storing energy in compressed-air in caves, in gravity; by pumping water up – to let it drop when needed – or in rolling […]

By: Storing Renewable Energy in Boxes of Air : CleanTechnica

Storing Renewable Energy in Boxes of Air : CleanTechnica — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:34:10 +0000

[…] are looking into storing energy in compressed-air in caves, in gravity; by pumping water up – to let it drop when needed – or in rolling batteries; […]

By: School District Revisits Making Ice at Night to Reduce Energy Use : CleanTechnica

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:21:12 +0000

[…] Related stories: Wind Storage to be Worth Trillions Pump Hydro Underground to Store Wind Power For Baseload Wind Cheaper than Fossil Fuels: CAES […]

By: Why Wind Storage Worth Trillions : CleanTechnica

Why Wind Storage Worth Trillions : CleanTechnica — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:03:49 +0000

[…] stories: For Cheap Baseload WInd Power: CAES Pump Hydro Underground to Store Wind Power US Must Socialize Grid to Add Renewable […]

By: Uncle B

Uncle B — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:47:42 +0000

Battery cars, now seemingly an inevitable part of a monumental paradigm shift from the “American Dream” as defined in the 1990’s, and being sold as we speak, in America, can ballast Wind and Solar vagrities too, but the question is: Enough? T Boone Pickens suggested compressed natural gas cars, and a Wind Turbine Corridor, both Avon guard, and viable ideas. Can our lifestyles be shifted by modern Science and the insulation technologies of say NASA? Saving energy is just as productive as producing it in a world of shortages, and the proposal is, we can live very comfortably and in sustainable fashion, outside the insane caterwallings of the advertising propagandists, by applying good common sense, and sound technologies to survival situations – No more SUV’s, lesson learned, No more McMansions, churned commissions and rapid foreclosures, lesson learned, No more extravagant “Fast Food” diets, with ill health, fat asses, and bad hearts to follow, Lesson learned! So, now what? How about massive Solar power development coupled with “Manhattan Project” scaled Wind development, to supplant nuclear power, a lesson we cannot afford to learn, with its disastrous waste products! How about mandating the processing of all bio-gasables to fuel and top-soil builders, for our depleted farmlands? How about Wind and Solar powered electric bullet trains, inter-city and computer controlled, for efficiency? How about extensive research on Wind Turbine desi9gns? How about geo thermal exploitation? America at a cross-roads, dollar falling, jobs escaping to Asia, and poverty encroaching on the fringes of and unsustainable current life-style, outdated by modern technologies, and held back by patent laws, civil codes, and corporate ROI fanaticism, insistent on the maintenance of an impossible “Status Quo” as oil gains and the dollar falls on world markets, faces paradigm shifts unprecedented for mankind! And the answer: is Blowin’ in the Wind!

By: Uncle B

Uncle B — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 10:47:00 +0000

By: Reese Palley

Reese Palley — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:02:32 +0000

Does anyone have any information concerning the potential of stored compressed air to pick up pollutants such as CO2 or arsenic etc from the walls of the underground storage sites?

Please respond by email to:

reesepalley@aol.com

By: Reese Palley

Reese Palley — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Does anyone have any information concerning the potential of stored compressed air to pick up pollutants such as CO2 or arsenic etc from the walls of the underground storage sites?

Please respond by email to:

reesepalley@aol.com

By: Kyle Laskowski

Kyle Laskowski — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:22:36 +0000

It seems unfair to compare the cost of the storage system with an output of 300MW to the cost of a fossil plant, as the storage can only keep up this output level for an amount of time not mentioned in the article, based on the maximum amount of stored energy the system is capable of. A fossil plant can keep generating 300MW while fuel is provided, this system will stop after the stored energy is gone, possibly minutes.

And also, from what I’ve read CAES does require natural gas to release the energy, and a variable amount of the energy used to compress the air is lost depending on the speed it is stored and the laws of thermodynamics (the heat produced by compressing a gas will dissipate with time into the surrounding rock and not be recoverable to do useful work).

By: Kyle Laskowski

Kyle Laskowski — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:22:00 +0000

By: Cyril R.

Cyril R. — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:07:33 +0000

You cannot build 300 MWe CAES for 25 million US dollars. That is just the grant, not the total project cost.

CAES is not very efficient which is a big problem. Use lots of natural gas.

The way forward is to separately store the heat generated during compression and use that to replace natural gas in heating during expansion. This is called AACAES. Such a system must be efficient and cheap, this appears possible but more money for developing full scale systems would not be a luxury.

By: Cyril R.

Cyril R. — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:07:00 +0000

You cannot build 300 MWe CAES for 25 million US dollars. That is just the grant, not the total project cost.

CAES is not very efficient which is a big problem. Use lots of natural gas.

By: russ

russ — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:51:54 +0000

A NG fired combined cycle plant should no way cost more than 0.5 million USD per mW – reasonably current numbers are even in the .25 million USD per mW range.

By: russ

russ — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:51:00 +0000

A NG fired combined cycle plant should no way cost more than 0.5 million USD per mW – reasonably current numbers are even in the .25 million USD per mW range.

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:21:28 +0000

Solar Brook – recommend reading Samir’s study itself – looks like 80%

http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/research/Capture/Papers/SuccarWilliams_PEI_CAES_2008April8.pdf

By: Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:21:00 +0000

Solar Brook – recommend reading Samir’s study itself – looks like 80%

http://www.princeton.edu/~cmi/research/Capture/Papers/SuccarWilliams_PEI_CAES_2008April8.pdf

By: Solar Book

Solar Book — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:23:11 +0000

This is exciting technology. The only problem is that compressing air requires a lot of energy to start with. Would you really get much more than 25%-30% efficiency with this model?

By: Solar Book

Solar Book — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:23:00 +0000

This is exciting technology. The only problem is that compressing air requires a lot of energy to start with. Would you really get much more than 25%-30% efficiency with this model?

By: Samir Succar

Samir Succar — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:41:59 +0000

Conventional “diabatic” CAES does require a fuel input (this is typically natural gas, although it could also be distillate, biomass-derived syngas [1], or any number of other options.) It is possible to capture the heat from the compressed gas in thermal energy storage and use that instead of a fuel source to heat the expanded gas withdrawn from storage. This adds to the cost of an already very capital intensive system so it would typically take very high fuel costs to make this an economic option. There’s a brief discussion of these “adiabatic” CAES systems toward the end of the report.

Cheers,

Samir

[1] P. Denholm, “Improving the technical, environmental and social performance of wind energy systems using biomass-based energy storage,” Renewable Energy, vol. 31, pp. 1355-70, 2006.