Description of need
Flywheels could play a role in stabilizing the grid under high renewables penetration, especially wind (see Bachovchin thesis, 2015). But current flywheel systems are not “good enough”.
Problem severity (1-10)
5
Who has this need
- Wind plant operators
- Utilities
Total addressable market (TAM)
Unknown
Solutions today, and their shortcomings
- Early-stage startup: Qnetic
Potentially relevant capabilities
- REBCO superconducting material
- Automated variable speed drive for flywheels
- Passive magnetic bearing design for flywheels
References
- Mukoyama, S., T. Matsuoka, H. Hatakeyama, H. Kasahara, M. Furukawa, K. Nagashima, M. Ogata, et al. “Test of REBCO HTS Magnet of Magnetic Bearing for Flywheel Storage System in Solar Power System.” IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity 25, no. 3 (June 2015): 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1109/TASC.2014.2363044.
- Mukoyama, Shinichi, Taro Matsuoka, Makoto Furukawa, Kengo Nakao, Ken Nagashima, Masafumi Ogata, Tomohisa Yamashita, et al. “Development of REBCO HTS Magnet of Magnetic Bearing for Large Capacity Flywheel Energy Storage System.” Physics Procedia, Proceedings of the 27th International Symposium on Superconductivity (ISS 2014) November 25-27, 2014, Tokyo, Japan, 65 (January 1, 2015): 253–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phpro.2015.05.139.
Notes
Francis O’Sullivan feels that better flywheels would be a big deal! We are losing physical inertia on the grid. You would probably sell into ancillary services and the capacity market for ancillary services.
According to Dongkeun Park, you need multiple HTS magnets to support a flywheel. But the cost of cooling is very high!
Shockingly (to me), flywheels don’t rotate synchronously with the grid frequency! See this reference.
Flywheels are sometimes used in conjunction with synchronous condensers for frequency regulation (see National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)): https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy20osti/75848.pdf
Beacon Power Corporation was an MIT spinoff and tried to commercialize flywheels.