Novel Equivalent Physical Simulation Model of a Compressed Air Energy Storage System and Its Implementation

Abstract

Compressed air energy storage (CAES) has its unique features of large capacity, long-time energy storage duration and large commercial scale. The application prospect of CAES has been recognized worldwide and attracts more and more researchers’ attention. The paper proposes a novel equivalent physical model of CAES and its implementation at a lab scale. The model uses the controllable electrical machine as its key modelling component to represent the compressor and expander of a CAES system under the principle of input-output characteristic equivalence. An implementation method of the physical simulation model is established and reported in this paper. The numerical simulation of the physical simulation system of CAES system is carried out based on the rotating speed data of the scroll expander and the load torque data of the generator recorded in the experiment. The results show that the proposed physical simulation model can mimic the CAES dynamic characteristics under all air pressure conditions. Therefore, it achieves the equivalent physical simulation model that agrees with the output characteristics of the test CAES system, which verifies the proposed implementation method.