Multi-energy Liquid Air Energy Storage Powered by Geothermal Energy from an Abandoned Exploitation Well – A Techno-economic Analysis

Liquid air energy storage is a promising thermo-mechanical electricity storage technology that can simultaneously deliver different energy streams, such as electricity, cooling, and heating. Yet, when operated in multi-energy mode, its commercial deployment remains constrained by limited round-trip efficiency and weak economic performance. This study proposes and techno-economically evaluates a novel integrated multi-energy LAES system coupled with 1) the low-grade geothermal heat from abandoned exploitation wells during discharging and 2) different industrial energy valorisation pathways, including direct waste heat utilization during the dehydrogenation of liquid organic hydrogen carriers, organic Rankine cycle, absorption chiller and clean dry air supply. The results show that bidirectional heat recovery and multi-output operation significantly enhance system performance. While stand-alone LAES remains economically unfeasible under all electricity tariff scenarios, exhibiting high LCOS of 0.97 USD/kWhe and no viable discounted pay-back period, integrated configurations achieve LCOS values below 0.15 USD/kWhe and a discounted pay-back period of 13.7 years. Among the investigated options, the configuration integrating direct waste heat utilization and clean dry air demonstrates the highest robustness to electricity price uncertainty. Furthermore, exploiting the horizontal extension of abandoned wells enables zero-emission geothermal heat recovery, offering a viable pathway for both well revitalization and electrical energy storage utilization.

Liquid air energy storage, Carnot battery, Electrical energy storage, Geothermal, Organic Rankine cycle, Absorption chiller, Wafer fabrication

10.1016/j.renene.2026.126240