Dallas Center 的计划花费4亿美元的储能公园项目日前被取消，因为一个研究报告指出其可行性存在问题。
本质上讲，将用来作为空气储存容器的沙岩情况不如官员预期的好。
Plans to build a $400 million stored-energy park near Dallas Center have been scrapped after a report raised questions about its viability.
The proposed 270-megawatt, compressed air project would have taken wind energy at off-peak periods, compressed the air into an aquifer 3,000 feet below ground and brought it back to the surface during peak usage periods. Officials said the park's output would have been more than twice the size of the electric load of downtown Des Moines on a hot summer day.
Iowa Stored Energy Park Agency director Bob Schulte said that geology tests found the storage reservoir wasn't suitable for the scale of project officials envisioned. Essentially, the quality of the storage rock, which would have been sandstone, wasn't as good as officials were looking for.
"The permeability, that is the connectivity between the pores, is less than hoped for. You can't get air through it fast enough, or out of it fast enough -- and that is the main problem with the geology," Schulte said.
The energy park's board of trustees met Thursday and canceled the project, which was set to open in 2015.
Schulte says officials are disappointed about the "geology cards that Mother Nature" dealt them roughly 1 million years ago. But Schulte added that the project gathered a great deal of information that can benefit other storage projects around the country that aren't so limited by geology.
Officials said that about $8.6 million has been spent on the Iowa Stored Energy Project so far. The majority of that funding came from the U.S. Department of Energy through its energy storage program, with additional support from the Iowa Power Fund.
Though agency officials said the concept of the project and potential long-term economics were sound, the geological limitations specific to the Dallas Center site forced members to look at easier, less expensive and less risky conventional alternatives.