As part of the green energy initiative, China has successfully scaled up its operations and linked the world’s first and largest 100-MW advanced CAES system to its power generation grid in Northern China. This is a comparatively low-cost but the most efficient energy storage facility as compared to lithium-ion batteries. This is because we are probably going to face an enormous shortage of lithium-ion batteries in the coming days, and this will lead to an increase in their prices as well. Hence, this new and advanced CAES system is definitely a viable approach to storing clean and compressed air energy.
Coupled with this, China has a long-term plan to efficiently endure almost a quarter of the energy storage system of the whole country by 2030 and this recent development under the scrutiny of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is a way forward. Furthermore, the facility is specifically positioned at Zhangjiakou in northern China and the Academy has regarded it as “advanced” in order to differentiate it from the McIntosh Plant facility. This facility was in operation since 1991 and is located in Alabama but it doesn’t fulfill the requirements of green and sustainable energy initiatives.
In addition to this, the China Energy Storage Alliance reports that this newly developed CAES plant features supercritical thermal storage, supercritical heat exchange, high-load compression, and expansion technologies in order to achieve maximum power efficiency and will eventually ramp up its operations. Also, the total efficiency of the system is 70.4% and it can “store and release” energy up to 400 MWh. Comparatively, the efficiency level of this plant is the highest because the existing systems operate around an efficiency percentage of 40-52%.
Not to mention, the two larger Hydrostor CAES plants which have been projected to make their first debut in 2026 in California will also be only 60% efficient. So we can analyze from this information that this newly incorporated CAES system in Northern China is going to be the most effective approach ever taken. One of the most interesting details to note is that this newly developed system is capable enough to provide 132 GWh of electricity every year to the local grid and in this way, around 40-60,000 homes can take benefit.
As it is based on a green energy concept, so it will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 109,000 tonnes annually by keeping about 42,000 tonnes of coal from being burnt in power stations. As said by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, “It is one of the most promising technologies for large-scale energy storage.”
