PROCEEDINGS, 43rd Workshop on Geothermal Reservoir Engineering Stanford University, Stanford, California, February 12-14, 2018 SGP-TR-213 High Efficiency and Large-scale Subsurface Energy Storage with CO2 Mark R. Fleming1, Benjamin M. Adams2, Jimmy B. Randolph1,3, Jonathan D. Ogland-Hand4, Thomas H. Kuehn1, Thomas A. Buscheck3, Jeffrey M. Bielicki4, Martin O. Saar*1,2 1University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 2ETH-Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland; 3TerraCOH Inc., Minneapolis, MN, USA; 4The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; 5Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, USA. *Corresponding Author:
[email protected] Keywords: geothermal energy, multi-level geothermal systems, sedimentary basin, carbon dioxide, electricity generation, energy storage, power plot, CPG ABSTRACT Storing large amounts of intermittently produced solar or wind power for later, when there is a lack of sunlight or wind, is one of society’s biggest challenges when attempting to decarbonize energy systems. Traditional energy storage technologies tend to suffer from relatively low efficiencies, severe environmental concerns, and limited scale both in capacity and time. Subsurface energy storage can solve the drawbacks of many other energy storage approaches, as it can be large scale in capacity and time, environmentally benign, and highly efficient. When CO2 is used as the (pressure) energy storage medium in reservoirs underneath caprocks at depths of at least ~1 km (to ensure the CO2 is in its supercritical state), the energy generated after the energy storage operation can be greater than the energy stored. This is possible if reservoir temperatures and CO2 storage durations combine to result in more geothermal energy input into the CO2 at depth than what the CO2 pumps at the surface (and other machinery) consume.