Material Suitability for a Flywheel in a Solar Photovoltaic Fed Power Conditioning System

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of mechanical batteries otherwise known as flywheels, in a photovoltaic based power conditioning system. The flywheel energy storage system (FESS) is a solid flywheel rotor coupled with electric machinery. The design factors like size, mass, speed of the flywheel were determined using numerical formulae. The choice of material was done through stress analysis using ANSYS software with a meshed model of 15245 elements and 24177 nodes. An experimental set-up of the FESS with a low ultimate-stress flywheel rotor of 0.52 m diameter and 12.8 kg mass was made from cast iron, designed and assembled as a single unit in a metallic frame.  The FESS system is tested to support an electrical load of 1kW. The test results were represented graphically to prove that a mechanical flywheel can be used for energy storage as well for power conditioning.

Keywords— energy storage, flywheels, modeling, power conditioning, stress measurement.