Groundbreaking Technology Stores Wind Power in Salt Caverns
In the Lloydminster area, a Calgary company is ready to carve out large underground salt caverns to store excess wind energy — the first use of the technology in Canada. Rocky Mountain Power president Jan van Egteren says the storage sites could be ready in five years. Salt caverns have been used to store natural gas for years, but only two other projects in North America are using them for compressed air that is turned into electricity. The caverns are carved out by pumping water deep down to dissolve the underground salt layer peculiar to the Lloydminster area.
