[en] Highlights: • Performance of NV-CAES with turbines is analyzed under sliding pressure mode. • Turbines for NV-CAES designed with precise 1-D design curve method are studied. • GNV-CAES presents 4.94% higher exergy efficiency and reduces the exergy destruction of 5.86 GJ. • NV-CAES with Turbine B shows lowest exergy destruction. • Proper choice on design condition of turbine under sliding pressure mode is proposed. A high-pressure stage turbine will discharge energy under sliding pressure mode in compressed air energy storage system (CAES) if without throttle valve installed upstream the turbine (NV-CAES). In this work, four high-pressure stage turbines A∼D are designed for NV-CAES with 1-D turbine loss model under four inlet pressures of 5.0 MPa, 7.0 MPa, 9.0 MPa and 11.0 MPa, respectively. Simulation results reveal that Turbine B has relatively wider working operation range and higher performance. Then, another high-pressure stage turbine in NV-CAES is designed with General performance curve (GNV-CAES) under inlet pressure 7.0 MPa. Both thermodynamic model and exergy efficiency model were built to simulation system performance of these NV-CAESs. For comparison, a CAES equipped with throttle valve (V-CAES), in which the turbine train works with constant inlet pressure, is also computed. Compared with V-CAES, GNV-CAES reduces the exergy destruction from 52.25 GJ to 46.29 GJ and improves the exergy efficiency by 3.3%. The thermodynamic comparison among NV-CAESs shows that The CAES with Turbine B shows the best performance with the storage pressure of 4.0–13.0 MPa. Thus, properly choosing design conditions of high-pressure stage turbine plays an important role to enhance performance of CAES with sliding pressure discharging mode.