With the EU setting goals for the member states to reduce their energy consumption by year 2020, efficient energy usage is of great significance in the current day Europe. Thus, innovations in the sphere of efficient energy use and management are of critical importance.
Addressing the issue, CHESTER project aims at developing a cost competitive innovative system that will allow for energy management, storage and dispatchable supply of many different renewable energy sources (RES) through the combination of electricity and heat sector. The innovative power-to-heat-to-power energy storage system – the so-called CHEST (Compressed Heat Energy Storage) – will be combined with the Smart District Heating creating a very flexible smart renewable energy management system able to store electric energy with a round trip efficiency of 100% or even higher. The system is expected to be site-independent (unlike pumped hydro), cyclically stable (unlike batteries), able to convert power into heat, able to convert renewable low temperature heat into power and able to store and deliver independently from each other upon request both, heat and power.