Evaluating plant configurations for adiabatic compressed air energy storage by dynamic simulation

Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) represents a zero emission electrical storage technology together with acceptably high cycle efficiency. Therefore the application of internal heat storage becomes necessary. One main characteristic of such A-CAES is that the heat generated during compression exceeds the amount of usable heat for the expansion process afterwards. In real life cycling mode this could lead to a heat storage overload. For heat storage management four possible solutions are proposed and discussed. To assess these solutions and to obtain a well suited overall plant configuration a dynamic model of the whole A-CAES process was developed with the focus on the stratified high-temperature heat storage. After an introduction to basic mechanisms relevant for the understanding of heat management in an A-CAES context, a brief explanation of the model structure is given and two heat management solutions are discussed more in detail.