Amber Kinetics, Inc. Project Description
None
U.S. Department of Energy
Amber Kinetics is developing a flywheel from sub-scale research prototype to full-scale mechanical flywheel battery and will conduct both a commercial-scale and a utility-scale demonstration. The goal is to deliver a cost-effective prototype flywheel that can be grid connected and electrically charged and discharged. The will have built-in sensing components that can determine frequency and voltage characteristics of the grid and can override the grid signal to manage the amount of electricity discharged. The flywheel stores energy in a spinning rotor that is connected to an electric motor that converts into mechanical energy. To recover the energy the motor is electrically reversed and used as a generator to slow down the flywheel converting the mechanical energy back into . Amber Kinetics will improve the traditional flywheel by engineering breakthroughs in three areas, resulting in higher efficiency and radically reduced cost: magnetic bearings, low-cost rotor, and high-efficiency motor generator. This technology can also be used to optimize existing infrastructure.
