Renewable Energy (RE) Company Emerging Power, Inc. is partnering with California- based Tech firm Amber Kinetics for the use of Flywheel Battery Storage Technology in its 150 Megawatt (MW) Solar and Wind power project in Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority. (SBMA).
EPI is the first firm to use the technology for utility scale RE projects in the country.
Flywheel energy storage works by rotating steel rotors at very high speeds allowing the system to store energy, in effect making the flywheel a reservoir for massive amounts of kinetic energy which can be drawn back out at any time.
Current commercially available Flywheel batteries efficiently work for a limited number of minutes.
Amber Kinetics’ technology has demonstrated the ability to store and release electricity for hours. It also offers unlimited cycling for a 30-year lifespan with no degradation.
These attributes make it ideal for integrating utility scale renewable energy and transmission.
“Amber Kinetics’ technology will be very useful in smoothing out the energy generation of our Solar and Wind farm by taking out the variability. We are very excited to work with Amber and hopeful that this milestone deal will be replicated in future renewable energy projects in the country,” said EPI Head of Marketing Alberto Guanzon.
Aside from dealing with the variability of solar and wind energy, Amber Kinetics’ state of the art flywheels will also provide multi-hour flexible capacity to the transmission.
EPI is looking into acquiring an initial 10-MW worth of Multi-hour Flywheel Battery Systems from Amber Kinetics for its Subic project.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Emerging Power to integrate energy storage into the 150mw solar and wind farm in Subic Bay. We believe that our multi hour flywheels are an ideal technology solution to help EPI smooth the variability of solar and wind generation into the transmission system. The EPI team is incredibly forward thinking and we are excited to be working together,” said Amber Kinetics CEO Edward Chiao.
EPI is majority owned by Nickel Asia Corporation (NAC), one of the country’s biggest mining firms.
NAC has guaranteed the loan facility of EPI for up to P3 billion over a three-year period to finance the company’s RE projects all over the country.