Sustainable, Affordable and Viable Compressed Air Energy Storage (SAVE-CAES)

SAVE-CAES项目的全部内容是开发大规模的长期能源储存，使英国能够在很大程度上(甚至可能完全)使用可再生能源。这种能源储存必须是负担得起的、可持续的和大规模的。压缩空气储能(CAES)有可能满足所有这些至关重要的标准。开发这样的存储设备可能是阻碍英国到2050年实现“净零”的最大单一挑战。英国各地的海上风能是未来英国零碳电力系统的重要资源。如果我们开发所有可以想象到的地区，英国海上风能每年可产生约2000TWh的电能--是我们目前一年用电量的5倍多。当然，从现在到2050年，用电量将会增加--可能会从每年约350太瓦时增加到每年约1000太瓦时。然而，我们完全可以通过风力发电。太阳能也将在为英国零网供电方面发挥关键作用，但有直接的原因表明，这将只提供我们未来约20%的电力。其中最强烈的与季节性有关：盛夏平均一天的太阳活动比仲冬的平均一天高9倍，但我们在冬季的能源需求却高于夏季。幸运的是，风也是季节性的，它通常在仲冬的平均一天提供的能量是平均仲夏的2.3倍。核电也将发挥一定的作用。对于这一角色的重要性存在不同意见，但对于理解或证明这项研究提案的合理性来说，这并不是非常重要的。让一个国家在很大程度上依靠僵化的低碳能源提供能源的关键问题是，需求和供应必须匹配，而需求相对“缺乏弹性”。这意味着，电价按比例发生的微小变化对用电量的影响非常小。对到2050年我们将为我们的电能支付多少的量化评估表明，只有不到一半的费用将由产生实际单位电能的直接成本构成。更大的成本将与提供灵活性--匹配供需的能力--联系在一起。不同的研究人员预测了不同的比例，但一致认为灵活性成本将是占主导地位的成本。CAES是英国最有希望的一套方案，可以在数十小时--可能长达100小时--的时间内储存大量(风能或太阳能)能源。CAES有潜力将良好的性能(超过70%的往返效率)与相对较低的成本(&lt；GB 2/kWh)结合在一起。世界上有两个不同的电网规模的储能工厂-一个在德国的亨托夫，另一个在阿拉巴马州的麦金托什-然而，这些工厂也储存化石燃料。许多评论家犯了一个严重的错误，即根据这些推断来估计CAES可能做的事情。SAVE-CAES项目着手于应用基础工程科学来确定一个设计良好的CAES工厂在不添加化石燃料的情况下可能会做什么。SAVE-CAES项目是一个充满新颖性的项目。加压空气将储存在近海或海岸的盐穴中。该项目将探索利用等压储存加压空气和管理浓盐水(盐水)进行压力调节。它还将探索超高压空气储存(以实现每立方米洞穴的最佳价值)。它还将探索在空气再膨胀过程中利用相对温和的地热的潜力，以及一些风力涡轮机可能被直接部署为为能量储存充电的最后一级压缩机的可能性。

Project SAVE-CAES is all about developing large-scale long-duration energy storage that will enable the UK to be powered largely (and possibly completely) from renewables. That energy storage must be affordable, sustainable and large-scale. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) has the potential to meet all these critically-important criteria. Developing such storage is probably the biggest single challenge standing in the way of "Net-Zero" for the UK by 2050. Offshore wind around the UK is a remarkable resource for a future zero-carbon UK electricity system. If we were to exploit all of the area that could feasibly be imagined, UK offshore wind could produce about 2000TWh of electrical energy every year - more than 5 times greater than the amount of electricity we presently consume in one year. Electricity usage will increase, of course, between now and 2050 - possibly increasing from ~350TWh each year to ~1000TWh annually. However, it is perfectly feasible that we can generate all of this electricity from wind.Solar power will also play a key role in powering the Net Zero UK but there are straightforward reasons why this will provide only about 20% of our power in the future. The strongest of those has to do with seasonality: solar on an average day in mid Summer is 9 times higher than on an average day in mid Winter, however our energy demand in Winter is higher than that in Summer. Happily the wind is also seasonal and it typically delivers 2.3 times more energy on an average mid-Winter day than it does on an average mid-Summer day. Nuclear power will also have some role. Opinions differ on how substantial that role will be but that is not very important for the purposes of understanding or justifying this research proposal. The key problem with having a country powered largely from inflexible low-carbon sources is that demand and supply must be matched and demand is relatively "inelastic". This means that proportionately small changes in the cost of electricity have very small influence on how much electricity that is consumed. Quantitative assessments of how much we will be paying for our electrical energy by 2050 suggest that less than half will be made up of the direct cost of generating the actual units of electrical energy. The larger cost will be connected with providing the flexibility - the ability to match up supply and demand. Different researchers predict different proportions, but the consensus is that flexibility costs will be the dominant ones.CAES is one of the most promising sets of options available in the UK for storing very large quantities of (wind or solar) energy over periods of tens of hours - possibly up to 100 hours. CAES has the potential to combine good performance (upwards of 70% round-trip efficiency) with relatively low costs (<£2/kWh). There are two different grid-scale energy storage plant which store compressed air in the world - one at Huntorf in Germany and the other in McIntosh, Alabama - however, these plants also store fossil fuel. Many commentators make the serious mistake of extrapolating from these to estimate what CAES can possibly do. Project SAVE-CAES sets out to apply fundamental engineering science to determine what a well-designed CAES plant without fossil fuel addition could possibly do.SAVE-CAES is a project filled with novelty. Pressurised air will be stored in salt caverns that are either offshore or at the coast. The project will explore the use of isobaric storage of the pressurised air and the management of concentrated brine (salt-water) for pressure regulation. It will also explore ultra-high-pressure air storage (for best value per cubic metre of cavern). It will also explore the potential for exploiting relatively mild geo-thermal heat during the re-expansion of the air and the possibility that some wind turbines might be deployed directly as last-stage compressors for charging the energy stores.