No abstract

The large-scale production of renewable energy is limited by the intermittence nature of the renewable energy sources. Moreover, the electricity production of the thermal and nuclear power plants is not flexible with the electricity demand. Hence, the integration of energy storage technologies into the grid has become crucial as it creates a balance between supply and demand for electricity and protects thereby the electrical grid. Among the large-scale energy storage technologies, a novel adiabatic compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) system will be developed in this paper. This storage system is characterized, compared to the conventional compressed air energy storage (CAES) system, by the recovery and the reuse of the compression heat in order to improve the system efficiency and avoid the use of fossil fuel sources. This paper discusses a comparison between the static and dynamic modeling of the A-CAES system performed by a computer simulation using “Modelica.” Unlike the static model, the dynamic model takes into account the mechanical inertia of the turbomachinery (compressors and turbines) as well as the thermal inertia of the heat exchangers. Consequently, it enables studying the flexibility of the storage system and its ability to meet the electrical grid requirements (primary and secondary reserves) by evaluating the duration of the transient states. Furthermore, the comparison between the static and dynamic models permits to estimate the efficiency losses due to the transient evolutions.The results show that the storage system needs more than 2 min before being able to consume all the excess energy available on the electrical grid and more than 5 min before being able to produce all the energy required by the electrical grid. These time frames are due especially to the transient states (start-up) of the turbomachines. Finally, the system efficiency is 64.7%, the transient states of the system cause losses of 0.9%. These small losses are explained by the short duration of the transient states relative to that of the steady states (15 hrs).

The balance between supply and demand for electricity is mainly disrupted by the growing contribution of renewable energy sources to the electrical grid, since these sources are intermittent by nature. Therefore, the energy storage systems, mainly those of considerable size, become essential to restore the electricity balance. The compressed air energy storage (CAES) system is one of the mature technologies used to store electricity on a large scale. Therefore, this paper discusses the energy and exergy analysis of different configurations of a constant-pressure CAES system in order to improve its overall efficiency and energy density. The exergy efficiency of our basic adiabatic configuration using water as thermal storage medium is 56.4% and the energy density is 12.17 kWh/m3. The results show that the CAES system using a packed bed of quartzite rock as thermal storage medium has the best efficiency (67.2%) and energy density (17 kWh/m3) among adiabatic systems. The diabatic CAES systems could have a net efficiency up to 70.1%, and an energy density up to 31.95 kWh/m3 by using combustion chambers. Finally, the waste heat recovery from other installations such as a gas turbine power plant has the potential to improve the energy density to 20.53 kWh/m3 without using fossil fuel sources.