The storage of energy in compressed air is not new; the problem was their relatively low energy efficiency, which Chinese scientists successfully solved. The development in Hebei Province has created, tested and will be commercialized by the end of the year with the world ' s most advanced air-compressive energy storage system of 100 MW.
The first project in the world, the CAES and battery storage devices, which reach 90%, are being implemented through the most serious financial injections.
In the process of compression, the CAES system produces a large amount of thermal energy; the German project does not use this heat, and in the case of compressed air, fossil fuel combustion is used to heat it, which in the complex greatly reduces the efficiency of the solution.
China's engineers have learned to capture and effectively store the heat from the compression process and then re-use it to heat turbine air. According to the results of the tests, the heat storage efficiency is maintained at 98.95% after eight hours and 98.73% after 16 hours, which is the highest of the existing CAES heat storage devices.
In parallel, China is implementing other projects on renewable and therefore unstable energy collection systems, such as the Sun and Wind: for example, a 100 MW storage system based on vanadium run-off batteries is being built in Dalian; and projects on energy storage in both conventional lithium batteries and more exotic options, such as the use of flywheels, have been launched in Inner Mongolia, Ninxia and other regions; China is seeking to become a leader in energy storage and is testing all possible options to achieve its objectives.