The €4 million project, with €2.9 million coming from the EU’s Horizon2020 scheme, will develop an innovative flywheel battery hybrid energy storage system aimed at stabilising pressure on the existing grid infrastructure in Europe.
Flywheels do not degrade over time compared to batteries so combining the two enables the storage system to operate more efficiently and reduce costs over the system’s lifetime.
Dr Dan Gladwin, from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Sheffield, said: “The UK national grid is becoming increasingly volatile due to the rising share of intermittent renewable energy sources. This manifests itself in deviations from the nominal 50Hz frequency as demand outweighs supply or vice versa.
“Battery and flywheel technologies can offer a rapid response, and can export and import energy enabling this technology to respond to periods of both under and over frequency.”
In the first stage of the project, the flywheel facility will be installed in Ireland, piloted by Schwungrad Energie Limited at their hybrid flywheel battery facility in collaboration with EirGrid. The flywheel system will be capable of a peak power of 500kW and able to store 10kWh of energy.
The system will then be installed at the University of Sheffield’s 2MW battery facility at Willenhall near Wolverhampton. The grid-connected research facility is one of the largest and fastest battery storage systems in the UK.
The flywheels will be upgraded to provide 1MW of peak power and 20kWh of energy storage and used as a hybrid energy storage system with the batteries to provide frequency response services.
A recent report by the National Infrastructure Commission has suggested that energy storage could contribute to innovations that could save consumers £8 billion a year by 2030 as well as securing the UK’s energy supply for generations.
