Utilities usually demand peak load plants to be readily available for operation, with a high reliability and availability, in addition to simple control and maintenance. Currently, utilities are using conventional gas turbines and hydraulic pumped storage, HPS. The latter has high capital cost and requires a difference in geodetic height. Therefore, compressed air energy storage CAES plants are being recognized as a technically feasible and economically attractive for load management. In this work, the performance of a CAES plant comprising: generated energy E-gen, energy ratio ER and primary energy efficiency eta(pe), is evaluated over a wide range of pressure ratio R-c and load, which depends on the rate of air discharged m(t). The latter is relevant to the charging-discharging ratio CD. A computer program was specially designed to evaluate performance. The results show that the CAES plant produces about 30% more power than that consumed during the off peak period. It produces about three times the power of a conventional gas turbine plant. It also enjoys economic superiority at part load. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
