A Flywheel Energy Storage System in a Microgrid for Powering Small Villages in Remote Islands in the South Pacific

Abstract

In most Pacific Island Countries (PICs), the populations reside in isolated communities where electricity generation is hard to access and therefore these communities are heavily dependent on fossil fuel based generation plants. One way to reduce the dependence on these fuels is to use the abundant, albeit intermittent, Renewable Energy Sources (RES). At present most RES based microgrids (MGs) use lead acid battery batteries as the only way to store energy, which can be detrimental for the environment. This paper proposes to minimize the ecological impact support them by using Flywheel Energy Storage Systems (FESS) so as to reduce the size of battery strings required or increase the storage performance of the MG. A case study on data for a small village in Taveuni (Fiji) is presented and the advantages of using a FESS as a back-up storage system are highlighted and discussed.