Beacon Power, a major player in flywheel energy storage, is now working with U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) on the development of a next-generation of flywheel storage. The new flywheel storage system is expected to be able to store 4 times as much energy as present flywheels, and at one-eighth the per kilowatt-hour cost.

This could lead to more capable power storage systems that could more readily be used with renewable power production such as wind and solar. According to Beacon Power, "One new application of particular interest to the Department of Energy is so-called "ramping" support for wind and solar power. The goal would be to provide one hour of flywheel storage as an energy-balancing resource for intermittent renewable energy assets, and thereby reduce the amount of fossil-based backup power that might be used to provide the same effect. The benefit would be to enable significantly greater market penetration of renewable generation resources in a clean and sustainable way."

Flywheel energy storage is a technology that has been seeing advances and developments in its use for grid storage over the past few years. Recent projects have been installed in New York and in New England in the past couple years, and more are being explored for other parts of the country. Developments in grid storage like this can lead to reductions in the need to run expensive peak power plants in periods of high demand and can help facilitate the use of more renewably generated power on the grid.

via: Solar Thermal Magazine

Another big grant recipient from the six seriously geeky developments that received USDOE funding as part of the ARPA-E program is a program to develop thermal energy storage with supercritical fluids from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

We've noted that the State of California has started approving solar-thermal power plants, and Google is even involved in research for solar-thermal power; it is a technology that has languished for some years, but is now starting to gain wider notice and application.

Presently, solar thermal power plants use a two-tank molten salt method for energy storage. Developing a supercritical fluid thermal storage system promises increased power storage and lower cost for solar thermal power plants. The proposed system is expected to have twice the energy storage density of current two-tank molten salt systems and cost less than 70% of what current systems cost.