Beacon Power Corporation, a provider of advanced services to support efficient electricity grid, has announced the successful installation and connection of a Smart Energy 25 flywheel energy storage system at a wind farm in Tehachapi, Calif.
One of the objective of this installation is to showcase how “intelligent agent” controls and Beacon’s flywheel energy storage technology can be brought together to enable as much wind-generated electricity to be delivered as possible without exceeding the limits of the locally constrained transmission system.
According to the company, the flywheel energy storage 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.
Advanced FES systems have rotors made of high strength carbon-composite filaments, suspended by magnetic bearings, and spinning at speeds from 20,000 to more than 50,000 rpm in a vacuum enclosure. Such flywheels can come up to speed in a matter of minutes much quicker than some other forms of energy storage.
Energy Commissioner Jeffrey Byron has commented that successfully integrating renewable energy onto the grid is one of California’s top energy priorities. As California builds the infrastructure to achieve 33 percent renewable energy resources by 2020, this research will be important in operating the transmission grid with more renewables in the future.
Byron added that in collaboration with the Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program, California ISO, and PG&E, Beacon Power completed a successful research project and field demonstration on the value of energy storage for maintaining reliability on the grid. It helped them better understand the communications and system control issues associated with integrating energy storage onto California’s electrical grid.
Bill Capp, Beacon president and CEO has said that this is the first Gen 4 flywheel that they’ve shipped, installed and operated outside of Beacon’s facility, and it went very smoothly. It’s also the first of their systems intended to show how energy storage can help optimize the output of a wind farm. They’re pleased with the continuing the good relationship they have with the California Energy Commission and the California ISO as they address the challenges of deploying intermittent renewable energy resources.
Nathesh is a contributing editor for IoTevolutionworld. To read more of Nathesh's articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by
Marisa Torrieri
