RICAS2020 - Underground Research Infrastructure for Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage

The objective is the planning of research infrastructure for the underground storage of renewable energy.

The central challenges of society in Europe – such as climate change, economic, social and sustainable development, as well as security – are closely related to a constant and efficient energy supply. The European Union therefore adopted a "Climate and Energy Package" in 2009, which intends to increase the portion of renewable energy sources to at least 20% by 2020.

This gives rise to a constantly increasing need for technologies to provide renewable energies. This need is addressed by the "RICAS2020" EU project covering the planning and design of an infrastructure to research the underground storage of large quantities of "green energy."

This research centres on AA-CAES (Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage). In this CO2-neutral process, compressed air is generated from excess energy and the heat that is additionally created during the compressing process is stored in a separate heat storage. The heat is later returned to the compressed air flowing to the turbine to generate electricity.

RICAS2020 will draft concepts for the key functions and define the technical, legal, organisational, and financial requirements for an AA-CAES research infrastructure. The RICAS2020 infrastructure is to emerge as an extension of "Research@ZaB"– an underground facility for tunnel construction research in Erzberg Mountain in Styria for studying the possibility of energy storage under expanded geological conditions. This is set against the background that the AA-CAES has been tested so far only in decommissioned salt caverns. The planned research infrastructure will be open in the course of the project to the entire European research community, in particular for research questions relating to the subject of energy supply and energy storage.

The scientific coordination of the "RICAS2020" project is led by the Chair of the Subsurface Engineering Department and the project management is led by the Industrial Liaison Department of Montanuniversität Leoben.

PROJECT DATA

Title: Underground Research Infrastructure for Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage

Instrument: H2020 – Design Study

Overall costs: € 1,352,388

EC funding: € 917,888

Project period: 36 months

Project start: 01/06/2015

Project coordinator: Montanuniversität Leoben (AT)

Project partners: