It's in the Air
Talk to Randy Mehrberg about renewable energy and you'll get almost the full alphabet of technologies he oversees, from air to wind. Mehrberg is president of PSEG Energy Holdings, the unit of New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group that develops the corporation's renewable energy assets.
I spoke to him recently about PSEG's ventures, and he seemed particularly excited about two compressed air energy storage (CAES) projects that are moving forward on opposite coasts.
"We're talking about large, underground storage areas for compressed air that will be released when needed," he said.
There's the 300-megawatt project being developed for Pacific Gas & Electric in California, with a precise site not yet announced. There's also the 145-megawatt project in central New York, with a site still to be determined, for New York State Electric & Gas. These are relatively large generation assets, to be sure. The projects were awarded $60 million in American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) grants.
In both projects, underground caverns are used to store compressed air that is pumped in overnight. The air is then released during the day to produce energy for load management; this technology is particularly useful to augment intermittent resources like wind.
That's the part of "the air" that helps make the case for CAES. "This is a good time to use wind energy, overnight, when it's blowing and when there isn't much demand for generation," Mehrberg added.
Another advantage is the power generation from CAES fills larger-scale requirements for the grid. Most battery storage technologies may be able to store a megawatt or two, Mehrberg pointed out.
PSEG entered the storage arena when it formed Energy Storage & Power (ES&P), a joint venture with Michael Nakhamkin. Nakhamkin is ES&P's chief technology officer and a leading CAES expert who holds patents for the second generation of CAES (CAES2) and power augmentation (PA) technology. Nakhamkin led the design and technical implementation of North America's only CAES plant in McIntosh, Alabama.
And as the technology moves forward, he and PSEG could have the second and third plants, too.
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