Basics of flywheel UPSs

Today's electrical power systems are plagued by a variety of disturbances ranging from short-duration sags, swells, and transients to long-term interruptions.

By Benjamin D. Miller , PE, B. Miller Engineering, Des Plaines, IL May 1, 2000

Today’s electrical power systems are plagued by a variety of disturbances ranging from short-duration sags, swells, and transients to long-term interruptions. These problems can be caused by motorized equipment within the plant starting and stopping, internal or external faults, or thunderstorm and lightning effects on the utility lines. In addition, power utilities in many areas of the country are operating at or near capacity, resulting in frequent “load shedding” (rolling blackouts) (Fig. 1).

Studies have shown that approximately 85% of all power events are voltage sags lasting less than 2 sec, with many under 1 sec. A study by Bell Labs found that 87% of downtime is caused by disturbances lasting no more than 0.5 sec.

Aggravating the problem is extensive use of electronic drives on large motors, preventing them from helping to maintain the bus voltage during disruptions. The motor is effectively decoupled from the system by drive electronics. Thus, industrial power systems today are much more vulnerable to power disturbances than they were in the past. Although electronic systems such as computers are highly susceptible, even electromagnetic contactors can be affected. A disturbance of only a few milliseconds duration can cause the shutdown of one or more individual machines, or an entire plant through a chain-reaction. The resulting cost to a company from downtime, product loss, and equipment damage can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Traditional UPS systems

To avoid these problems and ensure uninterrupted plant operation, more and more facilities are installing some form of uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Long-term needs are typically served by engine-generators. While they can provide power for an unlimited time as long as fuel is available, they require up to several minutes to start and synchronize, making them ineffective in handling the most prevalent short-duration disturbances.

For decades, electrochemical battery UPS systems have been used to handle short disruptions in power. These consist of large banks of rechargeable batteries, a rectifier/charger which provides dc charging current to the batteries when power is available, and inverter electronics that convert the dc voltage to ac to feed the critical load bus when needed. These systems are online and switch to battery power in a matter of milliseconds, and can provide power for up to several hours, which is known as ride-through. While battery systems can provide relatively large amounts of energy, they suffer from several disadvantages including large space requirements, high maintenance, environmental issues, and a limited charge/discharge cycle life.

So is there an option? It would appear that today the answer is yes.

New technology or old idea?

Since the earliest pottery wheels, people have known about the ability of a flywheel to store energy. This fact has been put to use in many machines, from the first steam engine to modern engines of all types, where flywheels provide smooth shaft rotation by eliminating engine pulsation. Sir Isaac Newton formalized this effect in his first law of motion, which states that a mass will tend to maintain its velocity unless acted upon by an external force.

This inertia principle has been used since the 1970s in rotary UPS systems, which consist of a conventional motor-generator with a flywheel installed on the shaft. In operation, the motor takes power from the supply bus, and the generator is always supplying power to the load. During brief interruptions, flywheel energy is used to maintain rotation of the generator and provide uninterrupted power. The rotational speed and generator frequency decay rapidly due to bearing and air friction and the loss of kinetic energy as it is converted to electrical energy. As a result, these systems can recover only a relatively small percentage of the available flywheel energy, and are limited to short duration ride-through. They can, however, supply large amounts of power, making them useful for handling short power events on large systems.

The new breed

Today there is a new generation of flywheel UPS systems, known by various names including kinetic battery, electromechanical battery (EMB), or flywheel energy storage system (FESS). They use high-speed flywheels rotating on extremely low-friction bearings in a near-perfect vacuum. They can store large amounts of energy and then deliver it within a few milliseconds when needed.

One drawback to flywheels is the energy loss associated with keeping the wheel spinning. Placing the units in a vacuum and using special bearings help, but the system will have continuous energy losses of approximately 1%. Depending on the kW rating and the user’s energy cost, this expense should be taken into consideration. It may be greater than the cost of maintaining a charge in a conventional UPS battery system.

How they work

For the past decade or so, a number of industry consortiums, government agencies, and universities have been developing state-of-the-art flywheel technologies and systems. Two technologies have emerged from the laboratory and are commercially available today. One uses a steel flywheel, the other a composite flywheel.

Steel flywheels have limited energy storage capacities, due to their mass and structural considerations, which restrict them to rotational speeds under 10,000 rpm. Because of their lower speeds, they are considered by some to be safer, and they can use conventional bearings. Steel flywheels deliver power from several seconds to several minutes of discharge time, which is probably their ultimate limit.

Much recent activity is in composite flywheels (Fig. 2). These flywheels are constructed of various arrangements of carbon and glass fibers, and are considerably lighter than steel flywheels. Typical operation is at rotational speeds up to 50,000 rpm, although the capability exists for speeds close to 100,000 rpm. Discharge times from several minutes to several hours are now available at low power levels. The flywheel is only a portion of the total system cost, becoming more dominant in low-power, long discharge time applications. In systems that provide high power for short discharge times, less expensive flywheels can be used and the power electronics cost dominates.

Both types of flywheels are completely enclosed within a containment vessel (Fig. 3) that serves two purposes. First, it provides a vacuum chamber that eliminates air friction with the flywheel. Typical vacuum levels as low as 10

The second function of the containment vessel is to provide protection against flying debris in the event of a catastrophic failure of the flywheel. This protection is generally accomplished in combination with several additional barriers, since the containment vessel alone may not have sufficient strength. Although not required, the entire containment assembly could be buried underground, with the electronics above, both for safety reasons and to provide a reduced footprint.

Many of the systems today, especially those operating at lower rotational speeds, use low-friction ceramic ball bearings. For higher speed operation, either passive magnet or electromagnetic bearings provide lower friction, noncontact support. Various hybrid bearing designs are also being developed which combine the advantages of several of these technologies, with the objective of balancing performance, reliability, and cost.

The motor and generator in most flywheel systems are rotating field ac devices, with magnets attached to or embedded in the flywheel, and stationary coils surrounding it. In many cases, the motor and generator share common components, resulting in a very compact package. Although some motor-generator designs connect directly to the ac bus, the most common arrangement uses variable frequency drive circuitry either from the ac supply or from the dc bus, to power the motor, and rectifiers to produce dc voltage from the variable ac generator output. DC operating voltages allow the flywheel system to directly interface with, or replace, batteries.

When ac power is required, the rectified dc voltage from the generator is fed to an inverter, which produces constant, utility-grade ac, regardless of flywheel speed. The flywheel UPS uses the same inverter technology as a battery system. Some flywheel systems are being marketed without the inverter to compete directly with batteries. Traditionally, power inverters have used silicon control rectifiers (SCRs) as the switching devices, but they switch relatively slowly and require significant current and external commutation signals to operate. In newer designs, SCRs are being replaced by gate turn off-thyristers (GTOs), which are twice as fast and self-commutating, but still require significant operating current. The most promising switching device for immediate inverter designs is the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT), which has much faster switching speeds and lower current consumption.

Sophisticated control systems monitor all aspects of operation of the UPS. Flywheel sensors supply information about its rotation, vibration, bearing temperature, and other parameters that provide an early warning of any pending failure.

Applications

Flywheel UPS systems can be used in several different configurations to meet the needs of a particular application. For a given energy storage capacity, there is a trade-off between power and discharge time. Both need to be adequate to do the job.

A small steel flywheel system with several seconds of ride-through capability can be used to augment a battery system, and reduces the number of discharge cycles on the batteries, which extends their useful life. The batteries are available to handle longer disruptions or provide time for engine startup (Fig. 4).

A flywheel system with several minutes of ride-through can replace batteries and handle the majority of short-duration power disruptions while allowing adequate time for engine-generator sets to start and provide long-term power (Fig. 5).

Flywheel systems with several hours of ride-through capability can be used alone to provide all the power quality and UPS functions, completely eliminating batteries and engine-generators.

A flywheel UPS powering critical loads full-time (series connected) can provide isolation from all incoming power quality problems such as harmonics and transients, in addition to ride-through during power interruptions (Fig. 6).

Multiple flywheels can be used for higher energy storage capacity, resulting in either higher power levels or longer ride-through times.

What about the future?

Further flywheel development work should result in higher rotational speeds and energy densities, lower cost, improved manufacturing methods, and fail-safe designs that can eliminate the need for heavy containment. Bearing developments include passive magnetic bearings with a 10—15-yr service life, and cryogenically cooled high-temperature superconductor (HTS) magnet designs which are virtually frictionless. Power electronic devices currently under development promise to provide higher power levels and efficiencies, faster switching speeds, and lower harmonic content. In addition to the hardware development, there is a movement within the industry to develop failure mode data, application guidelines, and minimum safety standards to ensure that these systems are applied appropriately and safely.

While composite wheels are currently more cost-effective in higher energy applications, both composite and steel flywheels appear to be competitive with batteries today for short ride-through applications. Flywheel systems are efficient, compact, and environmentally friendly. They can provide significant advantages over batteries in terms of lower maintenance and longer life, and are a definite contender for the future power quality and UPS markets.

Plant Engineering magazine extends its appreciation to Acumentrics Corp. for its assistance in supplying the cover picture for this article. We also express our appreciation to Acumentrics Corp., Burns & Mcdonnell, and S & C Electric Co., Power Electronics Div. for their assistance in the preparation of this article.

-Edited by Joseph L. Foszcz, Senior Editor, 630-320-7135, jfoszcz@cahners.com

&HEADLINE>Key concepts&/HEADLINE>

Flywheel UPSs can handle most electrical disturbances.

Short-term power outages can be bridged with only a flywheel.

There are two distinct flywheel systems: steel and composite.

&HEADLINE>Power quality definitions&/HEADLINE>

Dropout – A loss of equipment operation due to noise, sag, or interruption.

Dropout voltage – The voltage at which a device fails to operate.

Flicker – A variation of input voltage sufficient in duration to allow a visual observation of a change in electric light source intensity.

Frequency deviation – An increase or decrease in the power frequency lasting from several cycles to several hours.

Interruption – The complete loss of voltage for a time period.

Noise – Unwanted electrical signals that produce undesirable effects in circuits.

Overvoltage – An rms increase in the ac voltage, at the power frequency, for durations greater than a few seconds.

Power disturbance – Any deviation from some selected thresholds of the input ac power characteristics.

Sag – An rms reduction in the ac voltage, at the power frequency, for durations from a half-cycle to a few seconds.

Swell – An rms increase in the ac voltage, at the power frequency, for durations from a half-cycle to a few seconds.

Transient – A subcycle disturbance in the ac waveform that is evidenced by a sharp, brief discontinuity of the waveform.

Undervoltage – An rms decrease in the ac voltage, at the power frequency, for durations greater than a few seconds.

Source: IEEE Std 1100-1992

&HEADLINE>More info&/HEADLINE>

The manufacturers listed are available to answer questions about their flywheel UPSs and their applications. Contact them through their web sites.

Mr. Miller is a licensed professional engineer specializing in industrial controls, electrical power systems, and training in electrical maintenance and safety. He can be reached at 847-390-0596 or benmiller@worldnet.att.net.

Flywheel UPS manufacturers

CircleCompanyModelFlywheel technologyMax. powerRide-through at max. powerFull recharge time

The following companies provided input for this article by responding to a written request from Plant Engineering magazine. The model designations do not represent all of the manufacturer’s products, but are intended to show typical specifications.

221
Active Power
CleanSource
Integrated, steel
480 kW
12.5 sec
20 min

222
Acumentrics Corp.
Power Queue
Integrated, composite
250 kVA/200 kW
11 sec
&1 min

223
Atlas Energy Systems
RTMG
Coupled M-G, steel
3000 kVA
500 mS
& 1 min

DESS
Integrated, steel
2000 kVA
30 sec
& 1 min

FWUPS
Coupled M-G, steel
500 kVA
30 sec
& 1 min

224
Beacon Power Corp.
20C1000
Integrated, composite
1 kW
2 hr
30 min

40C1000
Integrated, composite
1 kW
4 hr
30 min

225
Hitec Power Protection, Inc.

Coupled M-G, steel
1800 kW
3 sec
6 min

226
Pillar, Inc.
Powerbridge
Integrated, composite
1670 kVA/1336 kW
12 sec
12-48 sec

227
Precise Power Corp.
RMG
Integrated, steel
150 kVA/120 kW
15 sec
0