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East Texas Getting Compressed Air Energy Storage Plant
First time accepted submitter transporter_ii writes "A compressed air energy storage (CAES) plant was first built in Germany in 1978, but East Texas will be the site of one of the world's first modern CAES plants. How does it work? A CAES power generation facility uses electric motor-driven compressors (generated by natural gas generators) to inject air into an underground storage cavern and later releases the compressed air to turn turbines and generate electricity back onto the grid, according to the plants owner. The location near Palestine, Texas was selected because of its large salt dome, which will be used to store the compressed air. The plant is estimated to cost $350 million-plus, and will create about 20 to 25 permanent jobs."
Square feet?
Cubic yards?
Kilowatt-hours?
Bottles of Lone Star BBQ Sauce?
Ping-pong balls?
Dollars?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It's not a job creation scheme, it's supposed to make money for some power company. The jobs are being mentioned to make the locals feel better about having this thing nearby.
This isn't a government make-work program. It's a project intended to serve an actual purpose, with the creation of permanent jobs as a nice side effect. The 'goodness' and cost-effectiveness of the job will be whether it reduces the ratepayer's bills, and/or increases utility profits (not sure of the regulatory structure out there), and/or increases the reliability of the grid.
If it could do those things and employ zero people, it would still be a good expenditure.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Dividing the cost of the construction by the number of employees doesn't give you the cost of the jobs. Or any meaningful information, for that matter.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
With a huge (call it infinite) reservoir, you can approach adiabatic. Air heats on the way in, but also cools on the way out. Dirt is a pretty good thermal insulator. If the caverns extend down to geo-thermal areas, you might even get some geo-thermal heating boost.
With no lake above the salt mine any new oil wells would just punch a hole in the ceiling of the mine that would have to be patched. While their is a small creek that passes above the retired salt mine, I highly doubt anyone would choose to drill in the middle of a creek when they could move 100 meters in almost any direction and have an easier time of it.
In addition, it isn't like they are pumping natural gas or other volatile chemicals that could cause a problem via explosion through a puncture- it is air, and at 60 to 70 bar is unlikely to cause any problems when there is almost 4000 feet of rock on top of it.
That said, the giant swirly that was Lake Peigneur was epic.
There seems to be some confusion in the thread. This isn't some new/offbeat method to generate power. It's an old/offbeat method to store power. Many power plants use methods for storing power when demand is low. Most pump water uphill and use the potential energy to meet a rising demand. Some efficiency is lost but it allows them to keep generating power (read cash) until the power can be sold. On a side note: Utilities count the stored power as actual assets on their balance sheets.
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