UK's Storelectric brings compressed air storage to the Netherlands

Storelectric received €50,000 for winning the NAM70 Challenge

The UK start-up, which proposes storing energy via compressed air in underground salt caverns, was recently crowned the winner of the NAM70 Challenge, run by Dutch energy company NAM.

As well as a €50,000 prize, Storelectric will now partner with NAM, which is jointly owned by Shell and Exxon, to investigate the idea of re-purposing oil and gas infrastructure for use in energy storage. They aim to build underground storage sites in the Netherlands and potentially the North Sea, to store energy from offshore wind farms and onshore solar power plants.

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is not itself a new technology and has been operating at a site in Germany since 1978, and at a plant in Alabama in the US since 1991.

At CAES plants, excess electricity, for example from intermittent renewable energy sources, can be used to compress and store ambient air under pressure in an underground cavern. Then, when electricity is needed, such as when the wind is not blowing, the pressurised air can be heated and expanded in a turbine to generate electricity.