Flywheel energy storage makes 100% wind and solar possible

We can meet all of our elec­tric­i­ty needs with wind and solar. But what about when the wind isn’t blow­ing and the sun isn’t shin­ing? Coal, nuclear and nat­ur­al gas make up 88% of the U.S. elec­tric­i­ty mix. There are sev­er­al answers to the myth that inter­mit­tent ener­gy sources like wind and solar can’t replace these dirty ener­gy sources. One of the most excit­ing is fly­wheel ener­gy stor­age, now being pio­neered on a com­mer­cial scale in New York and soon Penn­syl­va­nia. Check it out…

Fric­tion­less future for energy

By Scott Stafford, Berk­shire Eagle Staff
Mon­day July 11, 2011

STEPHENTOWN, N.Y. — The tech­nol­o­gy con­tained in a new, first-of-its-kind 20-megawatt fly­wheel ener­gy stor­age facil­i­ty has the poten­tial to make renew­able sources of pow­er such as wind and solar even more viable in the com­ing decades.

Locat­ed on sev­en acres with­in a cou­ple of miles of the Mass­a­chu­setts state line, the 3.5 acre stor­age facil­i­ty con­sumes no fuel and cre­ates no emis­sions by using fly­wheels housed in near­ly fric­tion­less con­tain­ers. Using kinet­ic ener­gy, the fly­wheels absorb or inject elec­tric­i­ty to relieve the grid of excess elec­tric­i­ty or to pump up pow­er in the grid dur­ing high-usage times.

The stor­age facility’s func­tion has tra­di­tion­al­ly been filled by fos­sil fuel-burn­ing plants. The new ener­gy stor­age facil­i­ty, due to be inau­gu­rat­ed dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny in Stephen­town on Tues­day, elim­i­nates the need for 10 per­cent of New York’s 200 megawatts of capac­i­ty required for grid sta­bi­liza­tion. And it is able to absorb and inject pow­er at a much faster rate than tra­di­tion­al plants — in sec­onds rather than minutes.

The $69 mil­lion dol­lar project, owned and devel­oped by Tyn­gs­bor­ough-based Bea­con Pow­er Corp. and backed by the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy and the New York State Ener­gy Research and Devel­op­ment Agency (NYSERDA), was com­plet­ed in Jan­u­ary and ramped up to full capac­i­ty last month for the first time.

Accord­ing to Bill Capp, pres­i­dent and CEO of Bea­con Pow­er, the fly­wheel tech­nol­o­gy makes this the first
such ener­gy stor­age facil­i­ty in the world.

It is con­sid­ered green ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy because it uses momen­tum rather than fos­sil fuel to sta­bi­lize elec­tric­i­ty lev­els in the grid. And because it can react so quick­ly to pow­er sup­ply changes, it makes the use of incon­sis­tent sources like wind and solar more palat­able to the over­all pow­er grid.

“It allows for the deploy­ment of more renew­able ener­gy by quick­ly adjust­ing to meet vari­a­tions from wind and solar,” Capp said.

The fly­wheel, sus­pend­ed between two mag­net­ic fields to reduce fric­tion, is set spin­ning at 16,000 rev­o­lu­tions per minute by elec­tric­i­ty pulled from the grid dur­ing peri­ods of low usage. When more pow­er is need­ed in the grid, the momen­tum of the spin­ning fly­wheel engages a gen­er­a­tor to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty and inject it back into the grid.

Sev­er­al of these oper­a­tions hap­pen from one minute to the next and are con­trolled remote­ly by grid oper­a­tors. There are a total of 200 fly­wheels in use at the new facility.

Fig­ures pro­vid­ed by Bea­con show that a 20-megawatt fly­wheel plant can reduce coal-fired plant CO2 emis­sions by more than 300,000 met­ric tons over a 20-year span, which is the equiv­a­lent of plant­i­ng 660,000 trees.

The facil­i­ty works at 90 per­cent ener­gy effi­cien­cy, makes very lit­tle noise and is, for the most part, under­ground, said Bea­con Pow­er spokesman Gene Hunt.

The plant will like­ly oper­ate for a min­i­mum of 20 years with­out main­te­nance, he added.

A $43 mil­lion con­di­tion­al loan guar­an­tee from the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy and a $2 mil­lion grant from NYSERDA formed an essen­tial part of the project’s financ­ing for­mu­la, Hunt noted.

“We pro­vid­ed $2 mil­lion because we do feel it holds a lot of promise and we’re hop­ing it will pro­vide us with a more sta­ble, reli­able and effi­cient elec­tric grid,” said Dayle Zatlin, asso­ciate direc­tor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for NYSERDA. “We are always look­ing for new ways to pro­vide clean ener­gy and, in this case, clean ener­gy stor­age. And we are cer­tain­ly inter­est­ed in any projects like this in New York State.”

The com­pa­ny is now plan­ning a sec­ond fly­wheel ener­gy stor­age facil­i­ty in Hazle Town­ship, Pa. with com­ple­tion antic­i­pat­ed for late in 2012, Hunt said.