Stronger hybrids for cleaner cities

A sustainable investment

With a vehicle life of 30 years, 19 hours a day operations and 150,000 cycles per year, energy storage for rail applications needs to be highly durable. Batteries are simply not a viable solution in this high intensity environment. Ultra-capacitors have gained some limited acceptance, but with lifetime, capacity and capacity fade limitations it is yet to be seen if they are a viable long term, cost effective solution.

Why flywheels are the best fit for rail applications

Our kinetic energy storage solutions are applicable to metro and light rail vehicles for both on-board and wayside locations. Characteristics of our flywheel technology include:

Thermally stable, high power, continuous operation
Tolerant of peak power charge and discharge events occurring in rapid succession
Ability to store more energy than ultra-capacitors
Not subject to capacity fade, power fade and efficiency fade
Capable of greater than 5 x 10⁶ cycle life
Low total cost of ownership

Our systems approach to flywheel design

We differentiate our approach to flywheel design and fabrication in the following ways:

Innovative modular design

Our flywheel systems are designed in modular "building blocks" of approximately 120 kW, 750 Wh units
These modules are small enough to fit on-board a rail vehicle, e.g. 3 - 4 modules for a tram or single metro vehicle
The same flywheel system can be increased in size to build a wayside solution. 20 units would provide 2.4 MW for approximately 20 seconds
1 - 2 units may be enough for diesel anti-idling applications
Provides redundancy for risk mitigation
The modular approach "future proofs" new vehicle design