Handbook of Energy Storage for Transmission or ... - W2agz.com

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Operating CAES Plants
The first and longest operating CAES facility in the world is near Huntorf, Germany. The 290-
MW e Huntorf plant has operated since 1978, functioning primarily for cyclic duty, ramping duty,
and as a hot spinning reserve for the industrial customers in northwest Germany. Recently this
plant has been successfully leveling the variable power from numerous wind turbine generators
in Germany.
The only CAES facility in the U.S., a 110-MW e plant near McIntosh, Alabama, has been in
operation since 1991. The McIntosh plant performs a wide range of operating functions; namely,
• Load management
• Generation of peak power
• Synchronous condenser duty
• Spinning reserve duty
Past CAES Development Efforts
Many other CAES plants have been designed and/or investigated but were not built for a variety
of reasons. Examples of such plants follow:
• During the Soviet era, a 1,050-MW e CAES plant using salt cavern geology formations for the
air storage was proposed for construction in the Donbas area of Russia. Underground
geological development of the air store using salt domes was initiated, but when the Soviet
Union collapsed, the construction was terminated.
• Israel studied several CAES facilities, including a 3 x 100-MW e CAES plant facility using
fractured hard rock aquifers [1].
• Luxembourg designed a 100-MW e CAES plant sharing an upper reservoir for a water
compensation system with a pumped hydro plant located in a hard rock cavern at the
Viendan site [2].
• Soyland Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Decatur, IL contracted for the construction of
a 220-MW e hard rock based plant. Plant engineering and the cavern sample drilling/rock
analysis was completed and all major equipment had been purchased when the project was
terminated due to non-technical considerations arising from a change in the Board of
Directors at the utility. ABB had been selected to manufacture the turbomachinery [2], and
Gibbs & Hill, Inc. had been selected as the plant engineering company.
CAES Technology
In CAES systems, electricity is used to compress air during off-peak hours when low-cost
generating capacity is available. For power plants with energy storage in excess of
approximately 100 MWh, the compressed air is most economically stored underground in salt
caverns, hard rock caverns, or porous rock formations. A CAES plant with underground storage
Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) Page 2