The renewables movement will be won on finances and nothing else.
It is anticipated that the project will yield an internal rate of return on capital of about 16.38%, with a payback period of around 7.1 years.
That sounds really promising.
The specs certainly look impressive. Let's hope this thing works as designed. Definitely a promising approach.
Wouldn't this be horribly inefficient?
The tldr says 72% efficient. If it can store excess solar or wind from times they are not in use and release at times of higher demand, it should be great.
Better is always on the road to perfect.
Yeah that isn't as horrible as I had initially thought, though its still not great
You are right though something is better than nothing, but I wonder how this facilities cost compares to an equivalent battery storage facility
In all of this, we need diversity. Diversity of generation sources (solar, wind, tidal, etc). Diversity of storage (Chemical batteries, compressed air batteries, pumped hydro, etc). Each will have different sweet spots; cost vs reaction time vs capacity vs efficiency.
Try not to dismiss a technology just because it's not the whole solution. Nothing ever is. They all contribute a part to the big picture.
Compared to what?
I was thinking of lithium or sodium ion battery storage
It would take 460 Tesla Megapack 2 XLs to be the same capacity as this. The biggest deployment so far of those is about 200 Megapacks 1 giving 450MWh capacity vs 1,800MWh for this.
The lithium batteries can supply the same power (300MW) and cost $160M. This cost $207M, so quite a lot cheaper given 4x the capacity.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Chinese developer ZCGN has completed the construction of a 300 MW compressed air energy storage (CAES) facility in Feicheng, China's Shandong province.
Previously, the largest CAES facility was a 100 MW project switched on in October 2022 by the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also in China’s Hebei province.
It claimed that the facility was 30% cheaper than the 100 MW project built by the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics and said its overall efficiency is 72%.
The $207.8 million facility boasts an energy storage capacity of 300 MW/1,800 MWh and occupies an area of approximately 100,000 m2.
The facility has an estimated annual electricity generation of 600 TWh and is projected to save about 189,000 tons of standard coal consumption.
The project's investor has disclosed plans to offer various ancillary services to generate revenue through participation in China’s electricity trading market.
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