Houston Startup Plans to Store Wind Energy Underground

July 8th, 2017

Via: Houston Chronicle:

Texans have long stored oil, natural gas and other forms of energy in underground salt caverns, so it’s only natural that a Houston startup wants to store wind energy there, too.

The method is in the company’s name, Apex-CAES, where CAES stands for compressed air energy storage. The company plans to use electricity at night, when it’s cheap, to compress air into an underground cavern. The company then releases the air through turbines to generate electricity when the price is right.

The only thing holding back this 30-year-old technology has been the economics. The difference between the high and low prices in a 24-hour period has not been large enough to generate a reasonable return on the capital investment.

Texas’ wholesale electricity market and huge nightly wind resource, though, make compressed air energy storage viable, said Jack Farley, CEO of Apex-CAES. Build enough compressed air energy storage, and Texas would never have to burn coal again, and consumers would enjoy even lower electricity prices, he told me.

“I think you could turn off all fossil-fuel generators in Texas when you wanted to,” he said.

Apex-CAES is raising $500 million to build its first facility near Palestine. Located near five existing natural gas storage caverns, the compressed air would spin turbines rated at 317 megawatts, capable of generating 15,000 megawatt-hours of electricity over two days without a recharge. The company, though, would never want to release all the air.

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