On September 30, Jintan Salt CaveCompressedAirEnergyStorageProject, theworld first non-supplementary fired compressed air energy storage power stationand also a national pilot demonstration project, mainly and technically developed by Tsinghua University, passed the grid incorporation test, and sent the first kilowatt of electricity generated by the Chinese first large compressed air energy storage power station to the state grid, symbolizing a great progress in the research, development and application of new energy storage technologies in China. Lu Qiang,academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University, Guan Guoxing, general manager of China Salt Jintan Co., Ltd., and Cao Qingwei, chairman of Huaneng Jiangsu Energy Development Co., Ltd. witnessed this important moment at the scene.

Compressed air energy storage technology team of Tsinghua University

Asthe party responsible fortechnicalresearch and development, the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University established a professional technical research and development team to provide technical support for the project. Mei Shengwei, a professor ofthe Department ofElectrical Engineering of Tsinghua University and vice president of Qinghai University, serves as the chief scientist of the project, and Xue Xiaodai, an assistant researcher of the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University, serves as the chiefengineering. Relying ontheadvanced non-supplementary fired adiabatic compressed air energy storage technology, the project has applied for more than 100 patents, and established a technical system with completely independent intellectual property rights;the teamdevelopedcore equipment includinghigh-load centrifugal compressors, high-parameter heat exchangers, and large-scale airturbines, which are fully designed and made in China.In terms of establishment of “Chinese Standards”, the project released the KKS coding standard forthe Chinesefirst compressed air energy storage power station,set up the projects forestablishing the first national standard for compressed air energy storage, the first power industry standard and three group standards, with which the Chinese standard system for compressed airenergy storage is gradually constituted.

Centralized control room of the power station

This project,approved by the National Energy Administration in 2017,is the only national demonstration project in the field of compressed air energy storageof China, andalso a keypromotionproject of the National Energy Administration and Jiangsu Province. It is jointly developed by China National Salt Industry Group, China Huaneng and Tsinghua University. The project has an installed power generation capacity of 60 MW, an energy storage capacity of 300 MWh, and a long-term construction scale of 1,000 MW.

Power station heat storage system

Energy storage is one of the key technologies for building a new power system and achieving the goal of “carbon peak and carbon neutrality”. Underground salt caverns have the natural advantages of large gas storage capacity,favourable sealingeffectand high safety, and can provide excellent gas storage conditions for compressed air energy storage. Salt cavern compressed air energy storage is a large-capacity physical energy storage technologyto store gas in underground salt caverns. It uses cut off the power peak to make up the power valley by compressing air into the salt caverns at the valley of power consumption and then releasing compressed air to generate electricity at the peak, so as to improve the grid regulation capacity and new energyacceptance and consumption. Depending on theadvantages of large capacity, longservicelife, safety and environment protecting, it is alarge-scale clean physical energy storage technology with great potential.

To satisfy thedemand for large-scale energy storage technologiesin new power systems and the energy Internet, Lu Qiang and Mei Shengwei’s team has worked through ten years of research and proposed a non-supplementary fired advanced adiabatic compressed air energy storage technology based on compression heat feedback, whichbroke through the bottleneck technologies incompression, heat storage/heat exchange, large-capacity gas storage, high-efficiency expansion power generation, and storage network control and dispatch, and laida technical foundation for thesuccessful implementation of Jintan Salt CaveCompressedAirEnergyStorageProject, a national pilot demonstration project.

Mei Shengwei (right) at the project site

According to Mei Shengwei, the grid incorporationtest successfully verified the developmentachievementof all the first sets of equipment for salt cavern gas storage, heat storage and heat exchange, and new air turbine power generation systems,laid a foundation for thecommercialization of non-supplementaryfiredcompressed air energy storage technology.It isan important milestone in the development and application of compressed air energy storage technology and willprovide strong support for the sustainable development ofthecompressed air energy storage and even the energy industry in China.

Turbine power generation system

As the world first salt cavern non-supplementaryfired compressed air energy storage power station, all maindevicesof the projectare the firstsets made in China, involving withdifficulties inresearch,development and integration of equipment, lack of standard and experience in construction, operation and maintenance of power stations. To face these challenges andimportant tasks, the projectparticipants have fully developed their respective advantages. China National SaltIndustryGroupbuilt the underground gas storage with its advancedcavity-making and injection-production technologies;China Huanengwas liable for project construction, operation and maintenance with itspower expertise.

Power station panorama

As a model of industry-university-research cooperation inTsinghua University, the project received strong support and assistance from the National Energy Administration, Jiangsu Energy Administration, State Grid, Changzhou CityGovernmentand Jintan District Government.This project will buildthe world first large-scale non-supplementary fired compressed air energy storage power station,set a newbenchmark in theenergy storage industry, and achievethreemajorgoals of compressed air energy storage technology testing, standardestablishing,engineering and commercial operation demonstration;moreover, it willaccelerate the construction ofJintan Phase IIcompressed air energy storage project, provide a new plan for the new power system centered at new energies, and make contribution to theearly realization of “carbon peak and carbon neutrality” inChina!

This article is forwarded fromthe news web ofTsinghua University