FAQ
Q. What is a kinetic battery (a flywheel, FES or KES)?
A. A kinetic battery is a device that stores electricity in the inertia of moving mass instead of using electrochemistry. In the case of our flywheel, the mass is spinning about its natural inertial axis rather than a physically-constrained axle.
Q. Is flywheel energy storage a new technology?
A. Flywheels have been used to store energy for a long time. However, due to the complex design and construction of these systems, they have not been able to compete on a cost basis with electrochemical storage.
Q. Do flywheels wear out quickly because of their many high-speed moving parts?
A. Many flywheels use mechanical bearings for radial support and shafts for axial support. However, Spinlectrix uses a unique design with no physical points of contact between the rotor and its support systems, resulting in no wearing parts. While other flywheel system designs using full magnetic suspension exist, they are too costly to compete with lithium ion batteries in large-scale storage.
Q. Will lithium be able to rule the energy storage market?
A. Lithium batteries will play a big part in energy storage in the coming years, especially in mobile applications. However, limited supplies of lithium, the variable nature of renewable energy storage, and other economies of scale open the door to larger-scale energy storage technologies like ours.
Q. Why not use lithium batteries to balance the grid-scale peaks and troughs?
A. Chemical storage like lithium ion lose capacity with every charge/discharge cycle. Spinlectrix’ kinetic battery is not directly affected by any number of charge/discharge cycles. This leads to an even lower cost over time because of the longer lifetime of the unit.
Q. Are power companies interested in this technology?
A. Power companies are searching for a cost effective energy storage solution. The ability for power companies to store energy throughout the day allows for fewer peaker power plants, and for fewer transmission lines. Power can be delivered with these energy storage installations at the grid level instead of generating more energy to match the demand at any given time.
Q. Is Energy storage only useful with renewable energy sources?
A. While the advantages of using batteries to store electricity are obvious for renewables like solar and wind power (allowing renewable power to be used on demand), batteries are also useful in combination with traditional systems. Batteries are capable of responding to instantaneous grid fluctuations, dropouts and phase-mismatches, and are especially important for micro-grid stabilization.
Q. What is the main advantage of kinetic over chemical batteries?
A.The main advantage kinetic batteries have over chemical batteries is cycle degradation. While chemical batteries store less energy with every cycle, kinetic batteries never lose storage capacity. Some other benefits are that kinetic batteries are much more resilient to temperature differences, and that the system is inherently AC, so there is no power loss converting DC to AC.
Q. Are lithium batteries more cost effective?
A. Even as lithium battery prices continue to drop, the current life of lithium electrochemical cells put them at a cost disadvantage over the lifetime of the products.
Q. Does SPIN’s kinetic battery react to temperature cycling like lithium ion batteries?
A. While chemical storage reactivity is cut in half for every 10°C drop in temperature, SPIN’s kinetic storage delivers the full capacity at any temperature.