The US Department of Energy (DOE) has finalized a $43-million loan guarantee for Beacon Power Corporation’s 20 megawatt innovative flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, NY.
Beacon’s Gen 4 flywheel system is specifically designed to perform frequency regulation on utility grids by absorbing and discharging energy to balance power generation and consumption on the electric grid. The technology operates by using flywheels to quickly store and release from the grid in order to follow rapid changes in grid demand.
Flywheel-based regulation is fast and efficient, ramping up or down 10 times faster than ramp rates for conventional fossil fuel generators that typically perform this service.
Beacon estimates that a 20 megawatt flywheel-based frequency regulation plant will reduce carbon dioxide emissions up to 82% over its 20-year life compared to a coal, gas or pumped hydro plant. The flywheel plant also does not emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide or sulfur dioxide.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/...
Progress on the Energy and Environment front. This facility will be the first of its kind in the world, able to provide around 10% of the frequency regulation needed to balance the New York power grid on a typical day, replacing fossil fuel-powered capacity.
Remember all that talk in 2008 about new technologies and smarter energy grids?
Well, here it is.
A little over a year since the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it would give a $43 million low-interest loan guarantee to flywheel builder Beacon Power, it’s made good on the deal. The company will use the money to bring its 20-megawatt flywheel plant online by 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Beacon Power designs and develops advanced products and services to support stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid operation.
What is flywheel energy storage?
Flywheel energy storage (FES) works by accelerating a rotor (flywheel) to a very high speed and maintaining the energy in the system as rotational energy. When energy is extracted from the system, the flywheel's rotational speed is reduced as a consequence of the principle of conservation of energy; adding energy to the system correspondingly results in an increase in the speed of the flywheel.
Most FES systems use electricity to accelerate and decelerate the flywheel, but devices that directly use mechanical energy are being developed.[1]
Advanced FES systems have rotors made of high strength carbon filaments, suspended by magnetic bearings, and spinning at speeds from 20,000 to over 50,000 rpm in a vacuum enclosure[2]. Such flywheels can come up to speed in a matter of minutes — much quicker than some other forms of energy storage.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Overview of Flywheel Energy Storage Technology