Construction begins on the first high-altitude salt cavern compressed air energy storage project in the southwest region

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Recently, the groundbreaking ceremony was held for the Kunming Anning 350-megawatt compressed air energy storage demonstration project, the first high-altitude salt cavern compressed air energy storage project in the southwest region, which is under the general contracting of China Energy Engineering Group’s Yunnan Branch. The project utilizes the abandoned salt caverns from the Kunming salt mines as underground gas storage facilities, with air compression systems, heat storage and exchange systems, and turbine power generation systems being installed on the surface. Its capacity is 350 megawatts/1,750 megawatt-hours; the system is designed to take 8 hours to charge and can operate at its rated power for 5 hours, with an annual utilization rate of no less than 1,500 hours. The project will employ a non-reburning compressed air energy storage system, and will be connected to the power grid via a 220 kV step-up substation; the total construction period is scheduled to be 20 months. This project is one of the first new energy storage demonstration projects in Yunnan Province, and it is also the largest in capacity and the one with the longest number of power generation hours among these demonstration projects. Upon completion, the project will be connected to Kunming’s main power grid, serving tasks such as peak shaving, frequency regulation, and providing system redundancy. It will help alleviate the pressures associated with the integration of new energy sources and peak load management in the central Yunnan region, and constitutes an important infrastructure for ensuring the stability of the local power grid, promoting the use of new energy sources, and developing a new type of power system. The project will serve as a typical example for the application of long-duration energy storage technologies in grids with high volatility, and it will provide a standardized approach for exploring energy storage in salt caverns at high altitudes.