The first-ever compressed air energy storage facility in Australia, which could pave the way for another type of renewable energy storage in the country, has been greenlighted.
The Angas Zinc Mine in Adelaide will be the site of the first Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) project in the country after a subsidiary of Hydrostor was awarded $9 million worth of grant funding to spearhead the undertaking.
Hydrostor Australia’s five-megawatt (MW) Angas A-CAES project will be dispatched into the country’s National Electricity Market (NEM) to offer synchronous inertia, load shifting and frequency regulation, which will support grid security and reliability. Additionally, the facility will facilitate the integration of variable renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind.
Pursuant to the plan going forward, the company plans to repurpose existing underground mining infrastructure at the Angas Zinc Mine, which is presently in care and maintenance, as the A-CAES system’s sub-surface air storage cavern. This is critical since it will benefit both South Australia’s electricity grid and the local community by taking an unused brownfield site and converting it into a clean energy project.
The technology employs grid electricity to operate a compressor, which creates heated compressed air. Heat is then extracted from the air stream and stored in a proprietary thermal store. Next, compressed air is stored in an underground cavern where a constant pressure is maintained. During the charging stage, compressed air removes water from the cavern and through a water column until it reaches a surface reservoir. During the discharge stage, the water retreats to the cavern. This forces air to the surface under pressure where the air is reheated with stored heat and subsequently expanded courtesy of a turbine to produce electricity as needed.
“Compressed air storage has the potential to provide similar benefits to pumped hydro energy storage,” said Darren Miller, CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which awarded a $6 million grant to Hydrostor Australia. The Government of South Australia awarded a $3 million grant. “However, it has the added benefits of being flexible with location and topography, such as utilizing a cavern already created at a disused mine site.”
Miller added that the project could open up another type of renewable energy storage in the country, which will support ARENA’s investment into delivering security and reliable electricity.
“Hydrostor is very appreciative of the contributions from ARENA and the government of South Australia for its first Australian A-CAES project,” said Curtis VanWalleghem, Hydrostor CEO, in a statement.
To learn more about the A-CAES project in Australia, check out the following link.