The 2011 Shortlist - Energy and Environment

ICARES: INTEGRATED COMPRESSED AIR RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS
Nottingham University, Thin Red Line Aerospace
The stated aim of the ICARES project was to find a way to make renewable energy both inexpensive and available on demand – no short order. To tackle these issues, a team from Nottingham University and Thin Red Line Aerospace developed an energy storage system that uses fabric bags of compressed air designed to be held deep underwater.

Storing compressed air deep underwater means that the hydrostatic pressure of the water provides most of the force needed to keep the pressure of the compressed air contained. It also provides an energy storage solution that can operate very close to offshore wind turbines.

Using fabric pressure vessels created by Thin Red Line – originally as a weightsaving material for the aerospace industry – the Nottingham researchers developed powerful analysis tools to determine what loads exist at various points in a fabric structure.

Alongside the innovation in this system, ICARES represents a shift in thinking about renewable energy storage. Instead of generating electricity first and then converting the energy for storage, the idea is to use wind turbines to power pumps that compress the air directly. This can then be saved to power turbo generators later on, cutting out a stage in the process and making the whole system more efficient because the energy is converted only once.