Edinburgh Napier University

  Aquifers have advantages over salt caverns as the storage vessels for compressed air energy storage due to their wider availability for suitable sites and lower one-off capital investment for construction. We conducted numerical simulations for compressed air energy storage in aquifers (CAESA) to investigate the effects of injected air temperature, the number of injection/production wells and their configurations on cycle performance, based on the data from the Pittsfield CAESA test. The results show that injected air temperature has a negligible effect on the overall energy recovery efficiency, but a higher injected air temperature leads to a higher energy storage capacity. A multiple-injection/production-well arrangement can achieve a larger storage capacity than single-well systems. The distance between the injection/withdrawal wells will affect the storage capacity. This suggests that for a multiple-well CAESA system, a comprehensive modelling study should be used for the optimal system design to achieve the most desirable storage capacity.