Project Objectives

The Design Study RICAS2020 aims to create an underground research infrastructure for AA-CAES and focuses on the technical, legal, institutional and financial requirements in order to get an approval as a future research facility.
Main overall goals of the Design Study are:

• Aggregation of long-term international expertise and know-how to form a uniform understanding and knowledge of Compressed Air Energy Storage to promote the development of renewable energy technologies and to increase the (public) awareness of energy issues.
• Providing a first step to a unique & common underground research infrastructure in order to find economic solutions for the storage of heat in excavated materials and to create high-capacity and high-efficient underground structures for CAES, which can later on also be developed close to big cities and other high capacity energy consumers.
• Establishment of a large-scale infrastructure of European interest to enable realistic conditions for research on questions of thermo processing, thermodynamics, security and safety of Compressed Air Energy facilities.
• Extension of an existing underground research facility to become a European centre for innovative use of underground space.
• Keeping in perspective the whole research infrastructures’ life-cycle including decommissioning during the whole planning and designing process of the research facilities

RICAS2020 main innovations:

• Location free: the underground air storage can be located anywhere – no limitation on the geological conditions
• Efficiency: high round-trip system efficiency by using a thermal-energy storage (TES) system and machinery optimization