Beacon Power, a major player in flywheel energy storage, is now working with U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) on the development of a next-generation of flywheel storage. The new flywheel storage system is expected to be able to store 4 times as much energy as present flywheels, and at one-eighth the per kilowatt-hour cost.

This could lead to more capable power storage systems that could more readily be used with renewable power production such as wind and solar. According to Beacon Power, "One new application of particular interest to the Department of Energy is so-called "ramping" support for wind and solar power. The goal would be to provide one hour of flywheel storage as an energy-balancing resource for intermittent renewable energy assets, and thereby reduce the amount of fossil-based backup power that might be used to provide the same effect. The benefit would be to enable significantly greater market penetration of renewable generation resources in a clean and sustainable way."

Flywheel energy storage is a technology that has been seeing advances and developments in its use for grid storage over the past few years. Recent projects have been installed in New York and in New England in the past couple years, and more are being explored for other parts of the country. Developments in grid storage like this can lead to reductions in the need to run expensive peak power plants in periods of high demand and can help facilitate the use of more renewably generated power on the grid.

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