Solving the Energy Storage Dilemma with Salt Caverns

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) doesn't get much press, but as EPRI noted a while back, it's one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity. And, since it's underground there shouldn't be much of the NIMBY mentality to contend with. Here's one company that's taking a common sense approach to make it happen.

The vexing part of bringing renewable energy sources like wind and solar into the Smart Grid is that they're intermittent sources of power — you can't count on them to be there when you need them. But a Utah company is working toward a multi-purpose underground complex to store that energy in the form of compressed air and other energy sources.

Magnum Energy LLC, a Salt Lake City-based gas storage company, is developing a 2,050-acre site in the desert north of Delta, Utah. The plan is to use solution mining to build four caverns in a massive salt deposit about a mile underground. The caverns will have capacities of about 10 million barrels of natural gas or an equivalent.

It plans to begin the dissolving process in the first cavern sometime within the next year.

So far, the only commercial sized compressed air plants are in Alabama and Germany, with more being developed in Iowa and Ohio.

The complex, part of the Western Energy Hub Concept, will at first store natural gas. But the company plans to make it available for CAES, which would solve the biggest problem facing wind and solar power generation: You can't count on it.

Intermittent winds don't turn turbine blades with any degree of predictability and cloud-covered solar panels don't do much either. And, as is the case particularly with wind, it frequently is blowing its hardest when it's needed the least.

So compressed air is a practical and, outside of the upfront cost of mining and facilities, cheap way to store wind and solar energy for peak demand periods.

Paul Denholm, lead analyst for DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab in Boulder, Colorado, told the Associated Press: "In terms of storing bulk energy — lots of megawatt hours — compressed air is cheaper than anything else out there."

What makes compressed air storage even more attractive is that the appropriate types of geologic formations can be found throughout the country.

As Craig Broussard, a Magnum partner put it in the same article: "The power industry is like being in an ice-cream business without a refrigerated warehouse."

The project is being backed by Haddington Energy Partners based in Houston.

From the source ...

Associated Press

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