A flooded lead-acid battery will be part of flywheel manufacturer Beacon Power’s latest 320kW hybrid energy storage project in Alaska.
The battery in the existing utility owned system is being used to help prove out the control system and application concepts of the Energy Storage System (ESS) in Anchorage.
The Massachusetts based firm entered into an agreement with Chugach Electric Association to install the system at a substation next to Chugach’s headquarters. It is expected to go into operation later this year.
Europe’s first 320kW grid connected flywheel project was officially announced last week. The project run by Schwungrad Energie in Ireland, will use Beacon’s flywheel. Read more here:
The projects both combine Beacon’s modular 160 kW flywheel technology, with lower duty-cycle batteries to stabilise variable output from renewable energy sources.
Schwungrad Energie, with the support of the University of Limerick, has been evaluating both lithium-ion and advanced lead acid battery options. A company spokesman said they were still ‘crossing the Ts and dotting the Is’ in an agreement with a battery supplier.
Dave Nickerson, Director of Customer Solutions, told BEST the battery chemistry in the Chugach application was not an ideal solution for larger future systems and other chemistries were expected to be evaluated.
He added: “Battery choice is of course a function of the application, but with the flywheel in front as the high-cycle first responder to a system’s power-focused storage needs, there are a lot of options.”
The flywheel system is already in commercial operation at 20 MW plants in New York and Pennsylvania.
Beacon and Chugach will test the system to see if can be scaled up to interconnect with remote system utilities along the Alaska Railbelt region.
