U.S. company aims to store energy in air

Under a barren patch of Utah desert, a private-equity group is bankrolling the project to hollow out a series of energy-storage vaults from a massive salt deposit a mile (1.6 kilometers) underground. It promises to make a perfect repository for storing energy and, in effect, creating a giant subterranean battery.

Energy storage is catching on as a way to make wind and solar power more useful.

Without energy storage, the output of solar and wind power is so erratic — the wind doesn't always blow; cloud cover can shut down solar cells — that utilities can take only so much of it, said Jim Ferland, senior vice president for operations for PNM Resources, the New Mexico utility.

If renewable power makes up too big a part of a utility's energy mix, it can make the delicate act of balancing loads on a power grid difficult. The lack of storage is one of the things holding back clean energy, say scientists for Sandia National Laboratories' energy systems group in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“Storage is the key here,” said Charlie Hanley, manager of Sandia's photovoltaic and grid integration group. “We have to find a way to overcome intermittent swings from cloud cover.”

The only commercial-scale, compressed air power plants are in McIntosh, Alabama, and Bremen, Germany. Other projects are under development in Norton, Ohio, and Ankeny, Iowa.

Initially, because of market needs, Salt Lake City-based Magnum Energy LLC will store natural gas for Rocky Mountain producers, taking it from a nearby interstate pipeline, in an “energy hub” near Delta, Utah. It hopes to start dissolving the first cavern within a year.

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