EDITOR’S CHOICE
TOMORROW’S WORLD
OPTIMAL
AUTOMATING
THE WORLD’S
FIRST FULL-
SCALE LIQUID
AIR ENERGY
STORAGE
FACILITY
An environmentally neutral, grid-scale
energy storage system that utilises electrical
energy to liquefy the air around us, store it,
then expand it back through a generator to
feed power into the grid - may sound a bit
like tomorrow’s world. It is however, a very
real prospect since the new 5MW Liquid
Air Energy Storage (LAES) facility, designed
by Highview Power Storage will soon be
operational thanks, in part to control and
systems integration work from Optimal
Industrial Automation.
After having built and tested a successful
pilot plant (which has now been moved
to University of Birmingham), Highview
and project partner Viridor were awarded
government funding by the Department
of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to
build a pre-commercial scale 5MW Liquid Air
Energy Storage technology demonstrator.
That LAES plant is now currently undergoing
final commissioning in Bury Lancashire,
where control panels built and supplied
by Optimal are dotted throughout the site
ready to manage and synchronise each of
the crucial stages of the process.
The LAES system comprises of three primary
processes: a charging system, an energy
store and a power recovery stage. In its
commercial form, these can be scaled
independently to optimise the system for
different applications.
Mike Weeks, automation project engineer at
Optimal describes the control architecture,
‘The entire system relies on a Siemens
SIMATIC PCS 7 PLC for overall control; this
manages I/O from other controllers, inverter
drives, RTU units, meters and sensors.
Each of the large process items has its own
unique set of control parameters, which we
have connected over a Profibus network. We
also connect to a GE PLC unit over Modbus
communications that controls the waste gas
turbo-expander, which is connected to the
power generator set.
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PECM Issue 37