Abstract - This study gives a critical review of flywheel energy storage systems and their feasibility in various applications. Flywheel energy storage systems have gained increased popularity as a method of environmentally friendly energy storage.
Other opportunities are new applications in energy harvest, hybrid energy systems, and flywheel’s secondary functionality apart from energy storage. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Thanks to the unique advantages such as long life cycles, high power density, minimal environmental impact, and high power quality such as fast response and voltage stability, the flywheel/kinetic energy storage system (FESS) is gaining attention recently.
Flywheel energy storage systems are increasingly being considered as a promising alternative to electro-chemical batteries for short-duration utility applications. There is a scarcity of research that evaluates the techno-economic performance of flywheels for large-scale applications.
While many papers compare different ESS technologies, only a few research , studies design and control flywheel-based hybrid energy storage systems. Recently, Zhang et al. present a hybrid energy storage system based on compressed air energy storage and FESS.
The use of new materials and compact designs will increase the specific energy and energy density to make flywheels more competitive to batteries. Other opportunities are new applications in energy harvest, hybrid energy systems, and flywheel’s secondary functionality apart from energy storage.