AbstractAn energy storage system that stores energy in the form of liquid air was studied. In this system, the cool storage unit was the most important unit. From the viewpoint of safety and economy, it was most promising to store the cold energy as the sensitive heat of a solid such as pebbles or concrete. A simulator was developed to predict temperature variations of the solid cool storage unit. The simulator calculated unsteady heat transfer between a supercritical gas flow and the solid material. Comparison of calculated and experimental results showed that the temperature variation of the metal cool storage medium was accurate within 11%. The calculated results showed for the concrete cool storage unit that a smaller quantity of medium was required with a smaller pitch of the tube. The minimum quantity of concrete calculated at the smallest pitch was three times that of concrete, which was simply estimated from the heat capacity of concrete and air. The volume required for concrete cool storage was less than 1/100 that of reservoirs for a pumped‐hydro power station having a vertical drop of 500 m. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 31(4): 284–296, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/htj.10035