Simulation of energy sharing among flywheels in parallel configuration

Flywheel express pallet experiment (FEPE) has been proposed on the international space station to study flywheel energy storage application for space power systems. In support of that effort, simulation of two independent, coaxially rotating flywheels, supplied from a common DC bus, was performed. The simulation procedure was divided into three simple steps. First, both flywheels are charged approximately to half way of the speed range. Then, charging of one flywheel is continued to fully charged state while discharging the other to minimum charge state. Finally, charge/discharge process is reversed to switch the energy storage states of the two flywheels. System description, scope of simulation, discussion of simulation results, and conclusions will be presented.