- 10May
Renewable energy: Flywheels could boost Ontario’s power grid
Temporal Power is hoping its giant flywheels will help make renewable power work in OntarioThere’s nothing like a 4,000-kilogram spinning steel cylinder to smooth out the ups and downs of the power system.At least, that’s what Temporal Power is betting on.The fledgling firm showed off its technology to Ontario energy minister Bob Chiarelli on Wednesday.Temporal is betting on flywheels as a solution to an increasing problem on Ontario’s power system: With an increasing amount of wind and solar power flowing onto the grid, you need systems that can counterbalance the natural ebbs and flows of renewables.And you need systems that can store surplus power when the wind blows or the sun shines strongly, and release the power when the wind is calm or the sun is dark.The idea behind flywheels is simple, and ancient. They store energy by spinning at high speeds up to 11,500 revolutions per minute in the case of Temporal’s wheels. Temporal’s wheels in fact are tall cylinders, about 75 centimetres in diameter and 1.25 metres tall.They’re suspended in vacuum chambers to reduce friction.A shaft projecting from the bottom of the cylinder connects the flywheel to a motor/generator — which can either use electricity, or generate it.When the wind is blowing hard or the sun is shining, it acts as a motor, drawing power off the grid to spin the flywheel.When the wind drops, the flywheel’s stored energy spins the shaft to turn the motor into a generator that pushes power back onto the grid.That’s the theory. Now’s the time to put it into practice.Temporal has an agreement with Ontario Power Generation and NRStore — a firm headed by Annette Verschuren —– for a flywheel facility to counter-balance the minute-by-minute voltage variations on the power grid.A second project is also in the works.“We have a five megawatt storage plant that will be commissioned in the summer of 2013,” says Temporal’s chief executive and co-founder Cam Carver.That will be installed by Hydro One near Tillsonburg in Norfolk County, an area dense with wind turbines and their variable output.The test for Temporal is the scale of their technology: The company claims its flywheels store 50 times more energy than most currently available flywheels.And they can be grouped together to magnify the capacity.David Curtis of Hydro One is anxious to see how it performs.“We have a number of alternative technologies; we’ve never evaluated the flywheel option,” said Curtis.Hydro One will be installing 10 flywheels, linked to work as a unit.The all-in price for the facility will be about $8 million, Curtis said.Carver wouldn’t discuss prices for their flywheels, but he and co-founder Jeff Veltri are betting the technology pays.They started the company in 2010 in a 1,000-square-foot industrial space, hand-digging the pit where they test the flywheels. (You don’t test tonnes of spinning stainless steel in an open area, in case something goes wrong.)Now they’re in a 20,000 square foot space in Mississauga, with 15 employees and looking to hire more, while gearing up to produce as many as 40 units a month by the end of 2014.Temporal recently attracted financial backing to help drive its expansion. Enbridge and Northwater Intellectual Property Fund chipped in $10 million in equity financing last February. Northwater had also participated in an earlier round of start-up financing in 2011.Chiarelli lauded the company during his visit.“The new frontier in electricity is going to be in storage,” he said after a tour.The Liberal government’s promise with its green energy policy was to create a new industrial sector that would provide well-paying jobs. Opposition critics have said the jobs haven’t materialized.Chiarelli said companies like Temporal show that green energy technology can pay off.“We are not going to compete in the world in terms of manufacturing garments or manufacturing buttons, or other things that have low manufacturing costs offshore,” Chiarelli said.“We are looking at 21st century technology jobs.”
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Renewable energy: Flywheels could boost Ontario’s power grid
