How do we build a world that ’s less subordinate on fossil fuels ? One root is right under your foot . Compressed Air Energy Storage ( CAES ) is a very boring name for a very awful system that turns the Earth itself into a giant battery . expert say it ’s one of the most monetary value - effective ways to hive away vigor on a massive ordered series — something that we ’ll have to do if we want to use more flatus and solar power , and less coal and natural gas . Here ’s how it works .
Every day , in more shipway than we even realize , you and I count on the reliability of our electric power grid - the web of wires that connect big businessman plants , houses , and business in an eternal circuit . But that grid is blemished in a lot of ways , some of which hinder our power to make energy more sustainable . For illustration , the grid has no storage , at least not enough to count . And that means that it ’s not as reliable as we think it is .
At any given moment , there must be almost exactly the same amount of electrical energy being produced as there is being consumed . If the balance tilts either way - even by a fraction of a percent - it could lead to a blackout . To just keep the sparkle on , the grid has to be constantly monitor , with controllers predicting demand and making small adjustment , min - by - minute , to supply . This happens 24 hours a sidereal day , 7 days a week . The job is hard enough with coal , lifelike gaseous state , atomic , and hydro superpower plant , which can increase or decrease production more - or - less on requirement . As we swear more on wind and solar baron , though , it ’ll get laborious . That ’s because the yield from those Department of Energy reference is more drug-addicted on the atmospheric condition than on what the gridiron needs . If you ’ve got a lot of galvanizing demand , but not much idle words , you ca n’t postulate a wind farm to produce more electrical energy .
This is n’t a big problem now , but it will become a problem in the future . When I was researching my book , Before the Lights Go Out , engineers and other grid experts told me that the United States could get somewhere between 20 % and 30 % of it ’s galvanic capacity from wind and solar power before we ’ll have to make some big modification to the way the gridiron operates .
Department of Energy memory is one of the key dick we have that can solve this trouble . But adding repositing to the grid is not as simple as it go . That ’s because scale matters . Chemical batteries , like the ace in our elevator car or our iPhones , are the first things most of us think of when we opine about storing energy . But by the clip you ’re talking about socking away enough push to light and baron a few hundred homes for just half a day , chemical batteries have to be ridiculously large . At this ordered series , a chemical barrage is the sizing of a semi motortruck , costs millions of dollars , and must be ship over from Japan . Nobody in the Western Hemisphere makes them .
That ’s where CAES amount in . CAES system store energy underground in the human body of compressed aviation , but to make it put to work you have to begin with the ripe kind of geology . In particular , you require a quad that ’s airtight . This means that you ca n’t just pump air into the sort of cave you ’ve toured while on vacation . Instead , you have to find a hollowed - out space underground that used to halt something naturally - such as a instinctive gas reservoir that ’s had all of the gas pump out of it . you may also use porous rock’n’roll - material that look solid , but is actually full of little holes .
Once you ’ve identified your cave , then you build up a wind farm nearby . These turbines have to be connected into the grid , but they ’re also connected to boastful air compressors . During the sidereal day , the system works like a normal wind farm , but at night , when the twist is plentiful and electric requirement is decidedly not , the turbine break air electricity to the grid . alternatively , that electrical energy is used to power the aura compressor . During the course of the nighttime , the compressors pump the cave full of air . Then the next twenty-four hours , as electric demand rises , that contract air is released and used to help hightail it an on - site generator , which is also partially power by natural gas .
The air stash away down there is under pressure , but it ca n’t explode because melodic phrase does n’t explode . A in high spirits - pressure air travel leak is a risk , and would be dangerous , tell Jared Garrison , a Ph.D. educatee at the University of Texas at Austin who studies the integration of CAES , wind power , and the grid . But the geology helps you invalidate that . “ You face for sites that have a dome - shaped impermeable caprock above the space where you ’ll stash away the air , ” he say . “ Pressurized gas only moves up , not down . So the caprock naturally holds the gas in position , where you put it . The only way for air to head for the hills is back up the pipe . ”
Nothing like this subsist anywhere in the humans today . There are two CAES systems in operation , one in Germany and one in Alabama . But they are n’t link to wind power . Instead , they ’re just used to provide backup to the power grid in world-wide . It ’s been 20 age since the CAES facility in Alabama was ramp up . It ’s only latterly - as more people have started to think badly about what it will take to get us off fossil fuel - that CAES has become more interesting . Right now , there are several plaza in the United States where people have proposed building a CAES system connect to wind might . The furthest along : Two sites in Texas that Garrison thinks will be breaking ground in the near time to come .
The company get those situation , Apex Energy , is in a serious position to make a CAES - and - wind combo successful . Texas has more installed malarky capacity than any other state , and most of those jazz turbines are build in places where the fart is strongest at night . Demand for electricity is in high spirits during the day , so a CAES system would allow Texas to get more usable energy from fart turbines that already exist . Instead of get a windy night go to waste , that vigor could be stack away and used the next day .
But success is still a moving target . A few years ago , Iowa looked like it was on track to become the situation of the first CAES system in two decades . But that project did n’t hap . The reason : After have a close look at the geology , researchers realized that the Iowa site would n’t be able to stack away as much compressed air as they needed it to .
Maggie Koerth - Baker is the author ofBefore the Lights Go Out : appropriate the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us(find out more here ) , and is the skill editor in chief ofBoingBoing .
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