The geological conditions are favourable for the construction of CAES power plants in Northern Germany, and also in many areas in Europe, for instance in the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Spain. Suitable salt domes are situated in many coastal and mountain regions where the winds are high. It is advantageous for Germany, that these locations are where there is potential for future expansion of wind energy: at sea, i.e. off Germany's shores.

With their underground caverns, the plants require little space, and their influence on the environment is only slight. The flexibility of CAES power plants is similar to that of pumped storage power plants. Full capacity is available just a few minutes after start-up. For limited periods, the compressed air stores cover the short-term reserve requirement, the minutes reserve, and the balancing capacity, which are needed due to the inexactness of forecasts regarding wind power grid-feed. This reduces the need for fossil reserve power plants and additional grid capacity. Wind turbines do not need to deactivate in the event of a grid overload, and if there is excess supply of electrical energy, the storage technology refines base-load electricity, converting it to peak-load electricity. Thus, the fluctuating electricity prices on the liberalised electricity market can be used to yield profits.

Storage power plants cannot replace the entire requirement for reserve power plants. Within an overall concept, they reduce the amount of grid expansion needed, and share the task of supplying peak load power with gas power plants, which can be regulated quickly.

Grid optimisation is complemented to no small extent by more effective consumption management, with which load fluctuations are regulated not only on the supply side, but also on the demand side.
Storage technology can also be combined with offshore wind farms. The idea of utilising lean gas deposits under the North Sea with a shared infrastructure is fascinating. The extent to which this is technically and economically feasible has not yet been conclusively determined. There are currently CAES power plants in the design phase all around the world; 10 plants are being planned in the USA alone. A CAES power plant belonging to the energy supplier EnBW should also be commissioned on the German North Sea coast by 2011. This will initially still be fired conventionally with gas, and will serve as a research project for more efficient storage technology with heat storage tanks, which is to be realised in a second phase. About 20 companies and institutes are working on this AA-CAES technology in the EU-sponsored project 'Advanced Adiabatic Compressed Air Energy Storage'. It is expected that there will be systems ready for industrial implementation by around 2015.