Beacon Power initiates 20MW New York flywheel plant

[Fledermaus]

North America’s largest flywheel energy storage facility reached full capacity yesterday and its 200 flywheels are now providing commercial frequency regulation services to New York’s electricity grid, with zero emissions and no fuel consumption.

Beacon Power's 20MW plant, which is based in Stephentown, New York, is currently North America's largest advanced energy storage facility. All 200 flywheels at the plant are now spinning.

Beacon Power said the plant, which operates continuously, will store and return energy to the grid to provide about 10pc of New York state's overall frequency regulation needs.

Speaking yesterday, Francis Murray, president and CEO of New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), said New York has set the goal of meeting 45pc of its electricity needs by 2015 through a combination of investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/green-tech/item/22799-beacon-power-initiates-20mw

[madinmaryland]

1. The scary thing is they are building 100,000 sf data centers which designed

to consume nearly that much power. I just finished working on a build-out of one that is designed with an 8MW capacity.

[FBaggins]

3. It's not really a generation thing

The entire facility could only handle that data center for a bit over half an hour before the flywheels spun down.

But that's not its purpose. Frequency regulation is an important function and can both save an outsized amount of polution, but also reduce expensive wear and tear on the rest of the grid.

[madinmaryland]

4. The neat thing is that flywheels have the potential to take eiesel generators

and batteries out of the mix for back-up in data centers, except for the most critical applications. Most applications need to have back-up for a logical shut-down of servers so that they can be brought back up when power returns.

Even in the case of critical applications, the flywheel could be used to replace battery back-up, before having to resort to generator back-up.

[Gregorian]

2. Here's some info on frequency regulation

This is interesting stuff. I've been having conversations with an engineer friend who is working with huge generation equipment, and has been sharing his ordeals when connecting to the grid.



I've been wondering how frequency is affected in a digital grid arrangement.

http://www.beaconpower.com/solutions/frequency-regulation.asp

[pnorman]

5. Thsanks for that very informative link!

n/t

[FBaggins]

6. And then goes belly-up a few weeks later.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5043593

[Nihil]

7. Oops.

:-(

[Fledermaus]

8. It belongs to the government now or soon will.