Volume 68

Seasonal Performance Variations and Dynamic Regulation Characteristics of Compressed Air Energy Storage Shijie Wang, Changchun Liu, Xuezhi Zhou, Yujie Xu, Haisheng Chen

Abstract

Seasonal meteorological variations significantly degrade the off-design performance and exergy efficiency of compressed air energy storage (CAES) systems. To address this challenge, this study investigates the dynamic charging process of a 10 MW advanced adiabatic CAES (AA-CAES) system and evaluates its impact on system-level storage performance. A system-level dynamic simulation model is developed in Modelica, capturing the nonlinear coupling of thermal, volumetric, and rotational inertias. The coupled response mechanism between inlet guide vane (IGV) aerodynamic regulation and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control of the cooling water flow is examined, revealing the dynamic evolution of exergy efficiency under cross-seasonal operating conditions. Results indicate that seasonal disturbances significantly shift the system’s operating boundaries. While IGV regulation exhibits inherent mechanical delay and the discharge pressure lags due to the heat exchanger’s thermal capacitance, the cooling-water PID controller robustly tracks the pinch-point temperature difference under both winter and summer conditions, demonstrating effective dynamic disturbance rejection. During the sliding-pressure charging process, the dynamic exergy efficiency varies nonlinearly. The coordinated IGV–PID control strategy yields the greatest efficiency improvement in the medium-pressure range, effectively minimizing irreversible thermodynamic losses. Notably, this efficiency gain exhibits marked seasonal asymmetry, with a substantially larger improvement in winter (1.51%) compared to summer (0.34%). Furthermore, by thermodynamically balancing inter-stage power consumption, the multi-stage coordinated architecture restricts the cross-seasonal variation in energy storage density to merely 2.6%, demonstrating exceptional thermodynamic stability for reliable grid integration.

Keywords Compressed air energy storage, Seasonal Performance Variations, Dynamic characteristics, Operation optimization