Core of world's largest compressed air energy storage plant installed

The Huaneng Jintan Salt Cavern Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) Phase II project – the world's largest CAES facility – completed the hoisting of its turbine unit on Thursday, marking the start of main equipment installation in east China's Jiangsu Province.

The turbine, known as the "heart" of a CAES plant, can respond to grid peak-shaving demands within minutes. It takes only about 10 minutes to ramp from startup to full load, converting the potential energy of expanded air into electricity. The unit has achieved 100 percent domestic production of all core components and is currently the most powerful turbine of its kind in China, with the country's highest single-unit output and largest air intake.

Phase II will deploy two 350-megawatt non-combustion CAES units.

Chen Hui, deputy director of the engineering, safety and quality department of the project, said that once fully operational, the project is expected to complete around 330 charge-discharge cycles annually. A single charge can store 2.8 million kWh of electricity, enough to power 100,000 new-energy vehicles. The plant will help save about 270,000 tonnes of standard coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 520,000 tonnes each year.