A trigeneration system based on compressed air and thermal energy storage

► Integration of CAES and heat storage enables trigeneration of electrical, heating and cooling powers. ► By using wind power and solar thermal energy the proposed system can be a standalone energy system. ► The comprehensive efficiency of the system is about 50% in winter and 30–40% in summer. This paper presents a novel energy storage system which stores excessive energy in the form of compressed air and thermal heat. It is different from the conventional compressed air energy storage (CAES) technology in that the new system allows trigeneration of electrical, heating and cooling power in energy releasing process. Uniquely, the cooling power from this system is generated by direct expansion of compressed air instead of the use of absorption chilling technology. In addition, the system can meet the end users’ demands for electricity, and heating and cooling powers through controlling the inlet pressure and temperature of an air based expander. A new parameter, the comprehensive efficiency, is proposed to evaluate the performance of the trigeneration system. Energy requirements of a small office building located in Chicago is used for the evaluation. The results show that the comprehensive efficiency of the system is very high (∼50%) in winter months when no cooling is needed. In summer months, due to the high power consumption in air compression process and inefficient expansion of the compressed air (for cooling power production) the comprehensive efficiency decreases to about 30%. However such a value is still higher than the conventional trigeneration system based on absorption chilling technology. The system is therefore very promising for practical applications particularly for the use of renewable energy due to good flexibility and simple configuration.