Automating the world's first full-scale liquid air energy storage facility

摘要

An environmentally neutral, grid-scale energy storage system that utilises electrical energy to liquefy the air around us, store it, then expand it back through a generator to feed power into the grid may sound a bit like tomorrow's world. It is, however, a very real prospect with the new 5MW Liquid Air Energy Storage (LAES) facility, designed by Highview Power Storage, soon to be operational thanks, in part, to control and systems integration work from Optimal Industrial Automation After having built and tested a successful pilot plant (which has now been moved to the University of Birmingham), Highview and project partner Viridor were awarded government funding by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to build a precommercial scale 5MW Liquid Air Energy Storage technology demonstrator. That LAES plant is now currently undergoing final commissioning in Bury, Lancashire, where control panels built and supplied by Optimal are dotted throughout the site ready to manage and synchronise each of the crucial stages of the process.