Enhancing Storage Capabilities for Active Distribution Systems Using Flywheel Technology.

This article presents a new approach to enhance the capabilities of flywheel energy storage systems to enable increasing the integration of small-scale photovoltaic distributed generation units in distribution systems. The storage capabilities of the flywheel energy storage systems are utilized to suppress the system voltage disturbances caused by the intermittent output power of the photovoltaic distributed generation sources in distribution systems. A dynamic model of the flywheel energy storage systems is presented. The flywheel energy storage systems model is simulated in a practical residential distribution network with small-scale photovoltaic distributed generation sources using PSCAD/EMTDC. The performance of the system is studied before and after installing the flywheel energy storage systems. The simulation results show that utilizing the flywheel energy storage systems technology in distribution systems with installed photovoltaic distributed generation sources can effectively reduce the frequent operation of the system automatic voltage regulators and increase the overall utilized energy of the installed photovoltaic distributed generation sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]