Flywheel Energy Storage

A flywheel is considered a mechanical battery that stores kinetic energy in the form of a rotating mass.

Flywheel energy storage.

Skip to main content. When the electricity is needed the flywheel drives the generator and produces electricity again. Photo by warren gretz courtesy of us doe nrel. The stored energy is the sum of the kinetic energy of the individual mass elements make up the flywheel.

Here a flywheel right is being used to store electricity produced by a solar panel. Flywheel energy storage fes is a relatively new concept that is being used to overcome the limitations of intermittent energy supplies such as solar pv or wind turbines that do not produce electricity 24 7. Flywheel energy storage is a method for storing energy using a rapidly spinning flywheel. A flywheel is a disk with a certain amount of mass that can spin to store energy in kinetic form.

14 5 are common in many transportation uses including for busses trains cars etc. A flywheel accelerates as energy is absorbed and decelerates when energy is delivered back to the system. 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. Energy can be removed from the system or added to the system by means of an electric motor generator.

The electricity from the panel drives an electric motor generator that spins the flywheel up to speed. Flywheel energy storage systems see fig. The flywheel which generally spins in a vacuum stores energy as rotational energy. Designed to work alongside renewable technologies such as wind and solar the flywheel allows intermittent renewable generation to continue generating even when the energy is not necessarily required.