Underground thermal energy storage (UTES) involves heat or cold being stored underground. Different storage media can be considered, and for CSP some of the ones considered include molten salt, concrete etc. Key UTES technologies are aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES), borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) and pit thermal energy storage (PTES).
A key advantage of UTES systems is that large amounts of thermal energy can be stored across seasons. The key challenge is that the efficiency of such systems is relatively low and therefore they have been mainly deployed alongside a cheap source of thermal energy/ UTES has been mostly used for district heating applications.
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Innovation sector01-11-2019
Source: Wiley Online Library
Renewable Energy
Energy storage
Core sciences & engineering
University researcher
Corporate researcher
Solution provider
Solar energy
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