FotoBiLFINGER

FlyGrid – Integration of a superconducting FlyWheel for grid stabilization

  • Contact:

    Prof. Dr.-Ing. Marc Hiller

  • Project Group:

    Power Electronic Systems

  • Funding:

    The project is supported and funded by PtJ and BMWi

    (funding code 03ET6121)

    Total project funding: ~ 2 mio. €

  • Partner:

    KIT - Institut für Technische Physik (ITEP)

    Netzgesellschaft Heilbronn-Franken (NFH)

    BiLFINGER SE

  • Startdate:

    01.05.2018

  • Enddate:

    30.04.2021

Objectives and Results

The highly volatile energy production increases the need for storage solutions in the public power grid in the near future. Amongst other possibilities a flywheel system can be used to store energy and provide peak load. In the FlyGrid research project, a superconducting flywheel is to be examined in a real application for its suitability as a storage solution for modern grids.

Content and Approach

For this purpose, a system is constructed, which consists of a flywheel and a power converter. The system is designed to have an energy content of 5 kWh and is able to exchange a power of 500 kW with the low voltage grid over the entire operating range. A modular multiphase multilevel converter (MMPMC) with nine voltage levels is used as the machine converter. In a first step, the system will be tested on a power hardware-in-the-loop testbench. Here, the behaviour of the system is examined under a wide variety of grid scenarios. Subsequently, the system will be operated for one year on the low-voltage grid in order to obtain measurement data in a real application and to be able to evaluate the suitability of the FlyWheel as an energy storage device for modern distribution networks.