Big levitated spinning disks will provide electricity to the grid in a project set to begin next month. Flywheel energy storage company Beacon Power on Tuesday said it plans to begin construction of a 20-megawatt storage facility in Stephentown, N.Y. Twenty megawatts could supply thousands of homes at a given moment, but flywheels store only several minutes’ worth of electricity.
Rather have many hours of stored energy on standby, the flywheels will store and dispatch bursts of electricity for what’s called frequency regulation in the utility industry. Because of fluctuations in power demand, power generators need to deliver power to the grid to maintain a steady signal frequency.
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