Gigawatt-scale compressed air: World’s largest non-hydro energy-storage projects announced

Source: Leigh Collins · RECHARGE NEWS · | April 29, 2021

The two 500MW/5GWh 'advanced' compressed-air projects in California would each be bigger than the current record holder

Source: Recharge News

A Canadian company has today announced that it is developing two 500MW/5GWh ‘advanced’ compressed-air long-duration energy storage (A-CAES) projects in California, each of which would be the world’s largest non-hydro energy storage system ever built.

Toronto-based Hydrostor is working with experienced US renewables developer Pattern Energy and French infrastructure investment giant Meridiam on the 500MW Rosamond project in Kern County, near Los Angeles, which would have a storage capacity of 4-6GWh.

Hydrostor is due to reveal more details about the second project, which would be in central California, within weeks, Recharge has learned.

The company hopes that both projects will be commissioned within three to five years.

Land has been secured at both sites, and Hydrostor (and its partners) are working on engineering, permitting of the projects, as well as submitting bids to the California Public Utilities Commission, which is working to secure up to 1.6GW of long-duration energy storage for the state by 2026.

Hydrostor’s technology — which has been proven at its 1.75MW/10MWh Goderich facility in Ontario, completed in 2019 — differs from standard CAES in that projects can be built anywhere.

Standard CAES, such as the 110MW McIntosh plant in Alabama, uses underground salt caverns to store compressed air and therefore can only be built in a very limited of locations. Hydrostor, however, utilises purpose-built caverns dug from the ground and can therefore be built almost anywhere.