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PG&E Wants DOE Dollars for Underground Air Energy Storage

How can you say that CAES is less expensive than advanced batteries? Have you included the cost of fuel for CAES? Remember, the compressed air is used to run natural gas turbines. And what about the efficiency loss? Compressors take wind power and force it into the ground - requiring energy. How many btu's are burned to run the compressor and natural gas turbines? Subtract that from the wind energy. And include the transformer losses at the facility. And have you included O&M costs to run the compressor and gas turbines? There are "2" CAES projects in the world and experts can say with authority that CAES is cheaper - on what volume of data?

I work with an advanced energy storage system, the vanadium redox flow battery, and I know the costs, I know the efficiencies, I know that I can build one within 12 months without major political turmoil. Give me the 10 years it will take for the Iowa project and I can have more than 300 MW at distributed locations where the energy is needed, without more transmission lines. And, the distributed batteries will provide back-up power, grid security, improved power quality, savings in distribution upgrades and demand response - what is the value for that? The PG&E CAES project is just another opportunity to spend lots of ratepayer money on a huge R&D project with uncertain political and environmental problems that may never get built.

More information on the vanadium redox flow battery - VRB-ESS - is at Utility-Savings.com.