Dr. Li Kou
Senior Research and Technology Development EngineerNew York Power Authority
Dr. Li Kou is the Senior Research and Technology Development Engineer for New York Power Authority. Dr. Kou joined NYPA in August 2007 and has been working on evaluation and implementation of various technologies, including solar, distributed wind, energy storage, biomass and waste-to-energy. Prior to joining NYPA, Dr. Kou worked for Siemens Power Generation on research and development of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells for 6 years. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology and holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Zhejiang University, China.
Investigation of Compressed Air Energy Storage
New York Power Authority (NYPA) in collaboration with Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) performed a feasibility study of a utility-scale underground compressed air energy storage (CAES) facility in New York State (NYS). The proposed plant has 300MW generation capacity with 10hours storage capacity. The feasibility study evaluated the engineering, economics and geologic siting of such a plant. Study has examined several CAES thermodynamic cycle configurations for the proposed plant and has chosen the most flexible and reliable configuration using the second generation CAES plant design. This advanced CAES design avoids the need for an expensive, high-pressure combustor, which in turn helps reduce CO2 emissions per kWh. It is estimated that the second generation CAES design will be about 25 – 30% less expensive in capital and 10% less in operational costs than the first generation CAES design. Based on NYPA’s forecast on fuel costs, load profiles, and hourly electricity prices, it is shown that arbitrage benefits alone serve to offset capital costs for a 300MW CAES plant in NYC region. However, for the Central region, ancillary and capacity benefits will be critical components of the benefit mix. For this study, we have mainly focused on the salt mine opportunities in NYS due to its low cost and mature technology.