Toward an Improvement of Gravity Energy Storage Using Compressed Air

The use of energy storage has received increasing attention due to the rapid growth of renewable energy generation. Among all energy storage systems, pumped hydro energy storage and compressed air are mature and large scale commercialized technologies. Combining the working principles of these two systems, a new concept is proposed in this paper, known as, compressed air gravity energy storage system. The feasibility of such technology has been analyzed in this paper by modelling the system components. In addition, its characteristics have been explored to investigate the optimal design of such system. The energy production of this technology has been compared to that of gravity energy storage without the incorporation of compressed air. The obtained results demonstrate that the use of compressed air significantly improves the system storage capacity. Therefore, compressed air gravity storage could be considered an attractive solution to the integration of large-scale intermittent renewable energy.