Cheaper Energy From Caverns of Compressed Air

An anonymous reader writes "By using the Earth's vast underground caverns to store compressed air generated by wind farms at night, several U.S. municipalities will be 'going green' by using that stored energy to generate daytime electricity on the cheap. Engineers at a National Lab think compressed air stored in underground caverns could cut in half the cost of electricity."

Comments

Re:How Efficient is It?

[kesuki]

you have a lot of questions but here is the point.

at night time the wind dies down to the point where wind turbines generate 0 power. the whole point is that they can compress air in existing underground caves, near municipal wind farms, to run them after dark.

I'm worried about long term side effects, 1200 PSI is a lot of potential energy, and cave systems, even an airtight system as this must be, are underground and usually there are things above it, in this case, prime iowa farmland. if the cave blows a gasket, you probably don't lose much, unless it happens to take the hill the windmill was on with it.

worse still, if you take down a farmhouse loaded full of farmers and get sued.. yeah the risk is low, and it saves using coal... oh and BTW because the power comes from the grid, the wind farm can be in one place, the cave system turbines in another location... (eg: using the same turbines to fill the caves as to create power at night)

but still, I'd feel safer with a atomic power plant in my backyard than a giant cave system being used to compress and store air to make power at night time.