Energy Storage: Principles, Advantages, and Design of Flywheel and Compressed Air Systems

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ENERGY STORAGE
A Research Paper on Energy By
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INTRODUCTION
This is an electrical power research paper that seeks to evaluate the impacts within
final and primary power distribution system, modelling and critically analysing the control
and flow of electrical energy within the final and primary distribution system, as well as
evaluation of generation and energy storage methods. The subtopic discussed in this report
paper include principles of operation of a field grid-based energy storage system, mechanical
design feature materials, energy storage schemes, design of energy storage system based on
existing the technology, and outline of the Electricity Market Reform.
Principles of Operation
A field grid-based energy storage system which is also known as a large-scale energy
storage can be defined as a collection of approaches utilized in storing electrical energy on a
huge scale within a grid of electrical power. An electrical energy is stored when production is
more than consumption and then the electrical energy can then be returned to the grid when
production is beneath the demand (Barnes, 2015). The figure below shows an illustration of
this grid-based energy storage system:
Figure 1: Field based energy storage system (Carnegie, 2014)
During peak periods when the consumption of the electricity is greater than average,
the suppliers of power should complement the power plant with is more flexible and less
cost-effective such as a flywheel. During the period of off-peak when the consumption of

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electricity is low, then the types of generation can be halted. In case a required electricity
quantity cannot be given at the moment when the consumers require it, the quality of power
will diminish and it may result in interruption of services (Denholm, 2013).
In order to meet the variations in the consumption of power, there is need of
generating continuously appropriate electricity amount to meet demand variations. Some of
the examples of the field based energy storage system include compressed air, batteries,
electric vehicles, flywheel, hydrogen, hydroelectricity, supper conducting magnetic energy,
thermal, and gravitational potential energy storage using solid masses (Dincer, 2016).
Advantages of Energy Storage Systems
The energy storage systems are used to feed power to the grids at a period when the
power consumption is more than its production and cannot be delayed or deferred. Hence
there is need of scaling up or down the electricity production so as to attain the consumption
momentarily. Every grid of electric power should correspond production of electricity to the
consumption, each of these drastically varies at a given period. These energy field based
energy storage system has the following advantages:
Emergency preparedness: Critical demands may be reliably met with no generation or
transmission takin place while needs that are non-essential are deferred. There are times when
there is need of an emergency demand in the industrial sector, this can be achieved through
the acquisition of the energy from the storage system that is connected to the grid.
Stability in pricing: The cost of demand or storage management is incorporated in pricing
hence the customers will be changed less variation in rates of power. In case the rates are
expected to be stable by the law of that state, low loss to the utility from on-peak power rates
of the wholesalers which is expensive when optimum demand should be attained by the
wholesale power that is imported (Gazarian, 2016).

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The peak capacity of transmission or generation may be minimized by the total potential of
all deferrable plus storage loads hence leading to the expense of this capacity to be saved.
The electricity produced by the intermittent sources may be used later or even stored.
Majority of the energy storage systems are advantageous since they are more efficient and
can be operated easily at levels of production at are constant. The types of energy storage
systems that are discussed in this paper include flywheel and compressed storage systems
(Gogus, 2011).
The reason why the flywheel storage system have been selected for the design of an
energy storage system is because it has the ability to deliver a high energy at a relatively high
efficiency than other energy storage systems such as batteries. The compressed air and
flywheel energy storage systems are also more advantageous than majority of other energy
storage systems like batteries, electric vehicles, hydrogen, hydroelectricity, supper
conducting magnetic energy, thermal, and gravitational potential energy storage using solid
masses since it is very easy to access information concerning the compressed air and flywheel
from numerous sources making their design to be easier than the rest.
The plants that have implemented the compressed air and flywheel can easily be
accessed during the process of design (Carnegie, 2014). These are the major reasons why the
flywheel and compressed air energy storage systems are the best and frequently used across
the world and not hydro energy storage system which possess similar advantages but is not
used since it requires a dam. Majority of industrial companies such as petroleum and power
generation are using nickel-cadmium batteries for retrieving data and systems through UPS
and not other energy storage system since the nickel-cadmium batteries have a very high
discharge rate than other energy storage systems. The high discharge rate is critical when a
huge amount of energy is needed for drive huge machines in the industries.