A regenerative drive for incorporating flywheel energy storage into wind generation systems

The authors describe an asynchronous transmission scheme for a flywheel energy storage unit, which provides a reliable, rugged, but also relatively low-cost interface allowing bidirectional power transfer between the flywheel and the rest of the system. Although operation with stand-alone wind turbines is referred to in particular, the transmission can be readily modified to suit other applications. The configuration forms the basis from which an integrated electrically driven flywheel energy storage package is to be developed for transport applications