The share of electricity generated by intermittent renewable energy sources is increasing (now at 26% of global electricity generation) and the requirements of affordable, reliable and secure energy supply designate grid-scale storage as an imperative component of most energy transition pathways. The most widely deployed bulk energy storage solution is pumped-hydro energy storage (PHES), however, this technology is geographically constrained. Alternatively, flow batteries are location independent and have higher energy densities than PHES, but remain associated with high costs and short lifetimes, which highlights the importance of developing and utilizing additional larger-scale, longer-duration and long-lifetime energy storage alternatives. In this paper, we review a class of promising bulk energy storage technologies based on thermo-mechanical principles, which includes: compressed-air energy storage, liquid-air energy storage and pumped-thermal electricity storage. The thermodynamic principles upon which these thermo-mechanical energy storage (TMES) technologies are based are discussed and a synopsis of recent progress in their development is presented, assessing their ability to provide reliable and cost-effective solutions. The current performance and future prospects of TMES systems are examined within a unified framework and a thermo-economic analysis is conducted to explore their competitiveness relative to each other as well as when compared to PHES and battery systems. This includes carefully selected thermodynamic and economic methodologies for estimating the component costs of each configuration in order to provide a detailed and fair comparison at various system sizes. The analysis reveals that the technical and economic characteristics of TMES systems are such that, especially at higher discharge power ratings and longer discharge durations, they can offer promising performance (round-trip efficiencies higher than 60%) along with long lifetimes (>30 years), low specific costs (often below 100 $ kWh⁻¹), low ecological footprints and unique sector-coupling features compared to other storage options. TMES systems have significant potential for further progress and the thermo-economic comparisons in this paper can be used as a benchmark for their future evolution.

间歇性可再生能源发电的份额正在增加（目前占全球发电量的 26%），并且对负担得起、可靠和安全的能源供应的要求将电网规模存储指定为大多数能源转型路径的必要组成部分。最广泛部署的大容量储能解决方案是抽水蓄能 (PHES)，但是，该技术受地域限制。或者，液流电池与位置无关，具有比 PHES 更高的能量密度，但仍与高成本和短寿命相关，这凸显了开发和利用其他更大规模、更长寿命和长寿命的储能替代方案的重要性。在本文中，我们回顾了一类基于热机械原理的有前景的大容量储能技术，包括：压缩空气储能、液态空气储能和抽水蓄能。讨论了这些热机械储能 (TMES) 技术所基于的热力学原理，并概述了其开发的最新进展，评估了它们提供可靠且具有成本效益的解决方案的能力。在一个统一的框架内检查 TMES 系统的当前性能和未来前景，并进行热经济分析，以探索它们相对于彼此以及与 PHES 和电池系统相比的竞争力。这包括精心选择的热力学和经济方法，用于估算每种配置的组件成本，以便在各种系统尺寸下提供详细和公平的比较。分析表明，TMES 系统的技术和经济特性是这样的，特别是在更高的放电额定功率和更长的放电持续时间下，它们可以提供有希望的性能（往返效率高于 60%）以及长寿命（>30 年） )、低特定成本（通常低于 100 $ kWh⁻¹ )，与其他存储选项相比，生态足迹低和独特的扇区耦合功能。TMES 系统具有进一步发展的巨大潜力，本文中的热经济比较可用作其未来发展的基准。