The government and industry are showing more and more interest in electricity storage. KEMA carries out a number of appealing and innovative projects for both large scale storage and storage at neighborhood level. At the EESAT ’07 conference, to be held in San Francisco from the 23rd to 26th September, KEMA presents four papers about these projects.

The storage of electricity at higher voltage levels is still in its infancy. With the liberalization of the energy market and the arrival of more and more decentralized power generation facilities, there is increasingly more interest in a flexible and reliable matching of demand and supply.  Up until now, electricity has been stored mostly in batteries and accumulators at low voltages. The most important form of large scale storage are dams in mountainous regions. Not every country has that opportunity. 

Energy Island
For the storage of large quantities of energy, KEMA has designed the so-called Energy Island. This artificial island in the sea consists of a circular dike in which a lake is dredged at a lower level. According to the energy demand, sea water is allowed to flow into the lake (generation) or is pumped back out (consumption), creating a large energy storage system.  

Battery
For the storage of electricity in the power grid, KEMA has developed a battery that can store a few megawatts for an extended period. This Redox Flow battery will be a cheap and convenient technology that can be used at neighborhood level. Not just to guarantee the stability of the grid but also to give the producers, industry and the consumer more control over the energy supplies. 
With the so-called Grow-ders project, KEMA will show how a battery and a flywheel and the combination thereof behave in an electricity grid in practice. This will answer questions such as how much electricity you can store, where the best place is to use a battery or flywheel, and how you control them.To conclude, KEMA presents a paper on carbon evaluation of traditional and flywheel power plants for grid regulation ancillary applications.