The ICAES technology, which is claimed to be the world’s first megawatt-scale isothermal compressed air energy storage system, stores and returns megawatts of electricity to offer long-term grid stability and support integration of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.
Situated at SustainX headquarters in Seabrook, New Hampshire, the 1.5MW ICAES system takes electricity from the grid and uses it to drive a motor that compresses air and stores it isothermally, or at near-constant temperature.
The technology captures the heat produced during compression, traps it in water, and stores the warmed air-water mixture in pipes.
SustainX said when electricity is needed back on the grid, the process reverses and the air expands, driving a generator.
SustainX president and CEO Tom Zarrella said the company’s isothermal CAES technology is an improvement over other bulk energy storage methods because it uses no fuel, produces no emissions, is power- and energy scalable, and can be sited anywhere.
"Thanks to numerous innovations on core system elements, SustainX has developed, proven, patented and now built the key enabling technologies for isothermal CAES. We believe this places our company at the forefront of large-scale energy storage system development and commercialization," Zarrella said.
