Low Cost Flywheel Energy Storage for a Fuel Cell Powered Transit Bus

This paper presents work that was performed to design a compact flywheel energy storage solution for a fuel cell powered transit bus with a focus on commercialization requirements. For hybrid vehicle applications, flywheels offer much higher power densities than conventional batteries. The presented design attempts to maximize the use of lower-cost technologies. The rotor relies primarily on steel for the flywheel structure, and emphasis is placed on size reduction for vehicle packaging advantages Simulations of bus configurations on measured routes was performed using PSAT to correctly size the flywheel energy storage system.