Britain’s new National Energy System Operator (NESO) is reportedly drawing up a plan to fit a string of huge flywheels to the grid to store power and ward off blackouts.
Following 57 “pathfinder” projects to assess the effectiveness of the storage systems, NESO is to set about building a network of flywheels for the grid, The Telegraph reported.
This comes after EDF director Rachael Glaving on Tuesday became the latest to warn of intermittent generation as the UK turned to weather-reliant renewables, like solar and wind.
Grid “stability” was set to be a key challenge for the NESO as it was officially set up on Tuesday, she said, given traditional generators were disappearing, including the UK’s last coal power station earlier this week.
“Spinning flywheels are one of a number of technologies needed to deliver inertia, control current frequency and other services to manage the physics of the network,” an NESO spokesperson commented.
These wheels, which can weigh up to hundreds of tonnes, are spun in frictionless vacuums using energy taken from the grid.
This energy can then be converted back into electricity almost instantaneously using magnetic induction, mirroring the process seen in the steam turbines of traditional power stations.
The NESO spokesperson pointed out that the weight and inertia of such turbines, like those in older power plants, meant they kept spinning even if power was lost.
“This avoids a sudden change of frequency, giving time for our control room to restore balance,” they said.
Such a process means that energy produced at times of low demand can be kept, reducing the risks from a lack of solar or wind generation when it is needed.