Mechanical Energy Storage

Abstract

Overview Chemical-energy storage systems use caverns, porous storage facilities, tanks, and storage rooms to store chemical energy sources. Caverns, caves, and reservoirs can also be used to store gaseous media such as air, liquid media such as water, and solid media such as rock. The principles of mechanical energy storage are based on classical Newtonian mechanics, or in other words on fundamental physics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a result, these types of storage are typically divided into two categories; storage of kinetic and potential energy, or storage of ‘pressure energy’. In this chapter, storage media is categorized by its aggregate state, and described by its function and application: first compressed air energy storage and then conventional electricity storage—pumped-storage plants. The chapter continues with a discussion of innovative methods of storing potential energy using water as a medium. These include artificially constructed pumped storage, pumped storage in the open sea, dam storage on rivers, pumped storage on heaps in repurposed mining areas, underfloor or underground pumped storage, and surface mine storage. The chapter concludes with a description of classical and modern flywheel energy storage systems. This age-old technology is then compared with a new concept: mechanical stored energy exploiting both pumped storage and change in the potential energy of rocks or large boulders.