Enabling Renewable Base Load Generation via Chemical Energy Storage

Energy storage plays a key role in the modern power system. Recently, the use of chemicals for energy storage, especially in long-term applications, has attracted significant attention. In this work, the potential benefit of using different chemicals –namely methane, methanol, dimethyl ether (DME), and ammonia – as energy carriers is evaluated. For a region of Spain, the optimal locations of plants to supply a portion of the local base-load power demand are determined as well as the transportation modes used to deliver the chemicals to the different demand locations. Moreover, a scheduling optimization is carried out to analyse the system's dynamic performance.