A techno-economic evaluation of decommissioned offshore pipelines as a pressurised gas storage medium for compressed air energy storage

Abstract

This article presents a techno-economic assessment for the manufacturing, installation, commissioning and operation of large-scale Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) systems by recommissioning fossil-fuel era infrastructure as the energy storage medium. It compares the key sensitives of a pipeline-CAES (P-CAES) system in terms of their technical design, technical challenges, implementation, likely costs and its overall value to the energy system in a UK context. A levelized cost evaluation has been employed to show the technology alongside other long-duration energy storage technologies and their potential in terms of scale-up, feasibility and cost. The outcomes show that if deployed in the right locations in the UK, that PCAES offers a solution which is technically feasible, scale able etc. with low (potentially the lowest) cost energy storage capacity at the 100MWe scale. Furthermore, it is already co-located and embedded into existing energy assets and infrastructure with in-flexible electricity supply and high demand centres.