An ever increasing demand for quickly available and cost effective energy worldwide stands opposite the issues of climate change and growing environmental awareness in our society. As a consequence, the demand for improved technologies in the field of energy storage, especially with regard to regenerative energies, is ever rising. This development is a major booster for developing new technologies and innovative production processes in this area. The diversity of the particular applications thereby lets new technologies face various challenges. Depending on the time the energy needs to be stored, and the number of according charges and discharges, different technologies are to be considered – but all of them have one thing in common: they essentially depend on vacuum technology.
Vacuum for flywheel technology
The short-term storage of energy has shortly been revolutionized by an innovative technology: mechanical flywheel energy storages. They are used as stationary or mobile systems in different applications. Part two of the series on “vacuum for energy storage” by Pfeiffer Vacuum focuses on stationary flywheel systems. Stationary flywheel systems are, for example, used as Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) in data storage centers and hospitals. Moreover, grid balancing tasks – which become more and more important due to an increased use of solar and wind energy – can also be supported by flywheel systems. A long lifetime even when facing many load cycles as well as the possibility to provide the stored energy instantly when needed make them the ideal choice for this application. Although the basic principle of saving energy through a rotating mass can easily be understood, designing an efficient and safe system is quite challenging.
Design of a flywheel mass storage
One of the main components of a flywheel is its rotor. It is usually either made of tempering steel or fiber-reinforced synthetics. The choice of the right material is demanding. Requirements are a high specific tensile strength to withstand the enormous forces as well as a low elastic modulus to keep the tight tolerances and to allow a high energy density, just to name a few. The rotational speed of the rotor can be several ten thousands of rotations per minute – some models even reach up to ninety thousand rotations per minute. Therewith, a high energy density can be reached.
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