LOW-COST ENERGY : IRISH wind energy storage company Gaelectric has signed a collaboration and development agreement with US flywheel energy storage firm Beacon Power that could see flywheel storage solutions deployed to provide short-term back-up electricity for wind farms in the United States and Ireland.

Gaelectric is a significant wind farm developer here, in the North and in Montana, in the US. Chief executive Brendan McGrath said: “As we learned more about the energy balancing issues related to greater wind deployment in Ireland, the UK and Montana, we saw the need to add a storage solution that can accommodate the seconds-to- minutes timeframe that compressed air storage, which we initially looked at, cannot.

“Beacon’s flywheel technology is effective in providing this service and can be deployed incrementally as wind assets are deployed.”

To identify opportunities for energy storage from increased deployment of wind, the two companies funded an extensive study of the Irish grid. It concluded that deploying fast-response flywheel technology on a large scale would improve grid stability, reduce wind curtailment, and improve the efficiency of the entire Irish grid, resulting in significant monetary and CO2 emissions savings.

They say opportunities identified in this study have broad market potential in Europe, North America, Asia and other parts of the world.