Flywheel Energy Storage for Rural Residential Applications Supplied by Intermittent Wind Power

Published in: Proceedings of the 13th Latin American and Caribbean Conference for Engineering and Technology: Engineering Education Facing the Grand Challenges, What Are We Doing?
Date of Conference: July 29 - 31, 2015
Location of Conference: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Authors: Ahmed Elsayed
Tarek Youssef
Osama Mohammed
Refereed Paper: #106

Abstract:

Driven by the environment concerns and high pollution rates, a global trend is initiated towards more deployment and utilization of renewable energy sources. This paper investigates the utilization of wind turbine system to supply residential loads in an isolated area. i.e. there’s no connection to the grid. In order to assure that the entire system is clean and has no environmental impacts, a chemical free energy storage is attached to the wind turbine. A flywheel which is sometimes called “electromechanical battery” is used here as a clean energy storage. The simulation results reveal the superior performance of the system. It is successful to cover the loads and continue operation without any reliance on the grid connection. This configuration can help to promote more utilization of wind turbines. This because the proposed configuration compensates for one of the most disadvantageous properties of wind power which is the intermittency.

Keywords—Clean supply system, flywheel energy storage, residential applications, rural area, wind power.