High temperature energy storage based on hot air turbine and pebble-heater technology

摘要

The HiTES energy storage is a high temperature thermal electric energy storage. It consists of a heating coil, a heat storage and a recuperated hot air turbine. HiTES can be applied to smooth out intermittency due to renewable energy sources, for load control, or other flexibility options. The low investment cost and the high efficiency make the HiTES energy storage economically feasible even today. The economic feasibility can be increased by improvements of the round trip efficiency and by decreasing investment costs. For that reason several improvements scenarios were analyzed. The most correct comparison between different energy storage systems is based on the levelized cost of the electricity storage - LCOES. It shows that HiTES is more economic than lithium ion batteries. The paper gives a short parametric analysis of the main parameters that influence the levelized cost of energy storage, like the specific investment cost, the round-trip efficiency and the price of the input electricity.