OPINION:
Washington’s focus on energy security, AI leadership and grid resilience comes at a key turning point for America’s energy landscape. Electricity demand is rising faster than anticipated, driven by data centers, artificial intelligence and the re-shoring of advanced manufacturing.
At the same time, current power infrastructure is aging, and supply chain disruptions are causing shortages of key equipment, like gas turbines. As a result, the power system is entering a new investment cycle.
These developments are increasingly interconnected and demonstrate the importance of delivering reliable power and not just any infrastructure will do the trick. The energy dominance agenda is taking on this unprecedented challenge and expanding the power conversation toward critical grid infrastructure like energy storage, which enables affordable reliability of the grid, maximizing its existing assets.
But as electricity demand peaks grow longer and more pronounced, utilities and grid operators don’t need just any energy storage assets. They need ones that provide firm, utility-scale capacity lasting eight, 12, or even 24 hours. In other words, they need long-duration energy storage (LDES). That capability exists today, but it requires thoughtful investment and policies to make it a reality.
Hydrostor’s Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage (A-CAES) is one such asset. It builds on decades of experience with traditional compressed air energy storage technology. Hydrostor has been able to bring forward improvements in efficiency, scale and flexibility so the entire country can benefit from these grid-scale storage infrastructure projects. A-CAES projects are infrastructure projects, leveraging standard industrial equipment, proven thermodynamic processes and underground storage caverns that can be purpose-built where needed on the grid, while supporting thousands of jobs and investing hundreds of millions of dollars in American communities. This is an evolution of a known technology, not a speculative leap. As a result, A-CAES is being viewed by grid operators as one of the key pathways to deploy tens of gigawatts of LDES capability across the country.
Other countries are already deploying compressed air storage at gigawatt scale as part of their national grid strategies. China has more than 7 GW of traditional CAES plants already grid-connected or in development. The potential for these technologies in the United States is even greater, and the U.S. has an opportunity to lead the world by deploying a more advanced compressed air technology at home that strengthens reliability while rebuilding domestic industrial and workforce capabilities.
Each large-scale A-CAES project supports thousands of jobs, many of them suited to skilled workers from oil, gas, mining and heavy construction backgrounds. These projects use American supply-chains and domestic manufacturing capacity. They generate local tax revenue and provide long-life infrastructure that communities can plan around with confidence. Projects like Hydrostor’s 500 MW Willow Rock Energy Storage Center also create hundreds of millions of dollars of investment into local communities.
For data centers and AI clusters, long-duration storage is already becoming essential. These facilities require large amounts of power that is predictable over long periods of time. A-CAES can integrate with existing generation, support grid-connected or behind-the-meter configurations and reduce system-wide costs by easing peak stress. Projects already under development demonstrate how LDES can support rapid demand growth without compromising grid stability or consumer energy prices.
Cost matters just as much as readiness. Independent analyses show that at durations beyond eight hours, long-duration storage solutions like A-CAES outperform lithium-ion batteries and even gas turbines on cost over its lifecycle. Storage systems designed for extended continuous runtimes from the outset do not face the same escalations in cost, which translates directly into affordability for customers.
The U.S. energy dominance agenda has already moved our federal and state institutions in this direction. Thoughtful engagement from utilities, regulators and capital providers are helping to bring long-duration solutions into the mainstream. Continued alignment across the value chain, coupled with supportive policies at all levels of government to provide regulatory certainty for financing these projects, will ensure that proven technologies like A-CAES can move from late-stage development into broad deployment.
Long-duration energy storage fits squarely within America’s energy dominance goals. With the right focus and continued collaboration, LDES technologies like A-CAES can play a foundational role in supporting reliable power, economic growth and U.S. leadership for decades to come.
• Jon Norman is president of Hydrostor.
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