August 4th, 2016 by Jake Richardson An energy storage project in Northern Ireland which will use compressed air has received an additional €8.3 million in funding from the EU. The site location is near the town of Larne on the Islandmagee peninsula, and the project developer is Gaelectric. (Larne is a port town with a population of about 32,000.) Based on this extra funding amount, one might not expect the storage capability to be that great, but reportedly it will be 330 MW of generation capacity for a duration of six to eight hours, which might be enough to provide electricity for about 200,000 homes. For the energy storage, compressed air will be placed in engineered caverns about 1.5 kilometers below ground level. “Northern Ireland and Larne will be the vanguards for safe, flexible and technologically advanced energy storage. With CAES, Northern Ireland will once again consolidate its position as a leading international exponent of engineering innovation and excellence,” Gaelectric employee Keith McGrane explained. This simple explainer video provides an effective, basic overview of the technology, but is not about this specific project. VIDEO At about 6:14 in this video, a Gaelectric employee talks about the Larne project in Northern Ireland. In it, he says the storage capacity is 8-11 hours, though the video is dated 2013, so that figure might be out of date. VIDEO In July of 2015, the project received €6.5m in EU funding for design and front end engineering. The latest EU funding round is for drilling, design, and commercial structure studies. The project is intended to be used for renewables integration and large-scale storage for the local grid. Northern Ireland has about 642 MW of installed wind power capacity, according to the Irish Wind Energy Association. The Larne project is one of nine which was received recommendations for financing under the Connecting Europe Facility, “CEF is engineered to address both groups of factors behind the investment gap in the energy sector. Financial instruments, by bringing in new classes of investors and mitigating certain risks, will help project promoters to access the necessary financing for their projects.” Image Credit: Wilson Adams, CC BY-SA 2.0 Drive an electric car? Complete one of our short surveys for our next electric car report. Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter. Tags: Gaelectric, Larne, N. Ireland Jake Richardson Hello, I have been writing online for some time, and enjoy the outdoors. If you like, you can follow me on Google Plus.
A compressed-air energy storage project in the Connecting Europe Facility , Larne , has been awarded additional €8.3m of funding from the European Union ( EU ), following a €6.5m injection in July of 2015 . Developed by Gaelectric, the system, which placed air in engineered caverns about 1.5 km below ground level, is expected to have 330 MW capacity for a 6-8 hour duration, enough to power around 200,000 homes. The Larne project was one of one that received recommendations for funding under Larne .