Load Balancing With Beacon Power's SmartEnergyMatrix
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 08.12.06
Beacon Power’s flywheels can absorb and release power in less than four seconds, balancing supply and demand on the power grid faster, cleaner, and cheaper than conventional power plants. Technology Review over at MIT has an in-depth article outlining how skid-mounted flywheel clusters are being tested in a pair of load balancing/frequency control projects. Should the prototypes be proven and then accepted on a nation-wide scale it should make for a substantial energy savings and reduced odds of grid failure, as well as collective pollution reductions. Hard to grasp until you read the entire article. If you're one of the visual-first types, we recommend first having a look at the Beacon flash animation called "Flywheels and Frequency Regulation". Final note: wind power growth increases the need for better frequency regulation; so, you windies ought to allign with the Beacon Mer-go-i-round.
1) this Wired Article from 2000 is a great primer on flywheels, I think:
2) I want one! Is there any case of a private person using one of those smaller BHE-6 in his home solar/wind installation? How much does one cost, approximately?
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From what I have been able to read, Beacon has not been able to grow sufficiently in the power back up market; and this grid stabilization use is where they are getting the most new interest. They're a small firm: send an email and I bet they'll respond if theyhave examples.
I remember reading about the flywheel battery in Wired way back.
I want a flywheel energy backup at my house to store surplus wind energy. No chemicals just machinery.
It seems like flywheel tech has finally become a reality. There was a post on Hugg about flywheel UPS's. How about a flywheel EV?
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Good idea except for the gyroscopic effect, which would cause comic crash effects in mobile applications (at the high RPM's used by the Beacon).