Compressed Air Energy Storage

I hadn't heard about this before. The idea is to use surplus wind farm energy to pressurize a sealed underground vault. Then, when the energy is needed, the pressure is slowly released to help power an energy-generating turbine. Kind of brilliant. I wonder if the idea could be miniaturized to use on a small scale, say on a private farm with one or two turbines or on a set of solar panels attached to a house. Seems like it would be a pretty location-oriented solution.

clipped from ecotality.com “The group is building a system that will steer surplus electricity generated by a nearby wind farm to a big air compressor (diagram). Connected to a deep well, the compressor pumps air into layers of sandstone. Some 3,000 feet down and sealed from above by dense shale, the porous sandstone acts like a giant balloon. Later, when demand for power rises, this flow is reversed. As the chamber empties, a whoosh of air flows back up the pipe into a natural-gas-fired turbine, boosting its efficiency by upwards of 60%.”