Date: Apr 15, 2013 Source: MDA (
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Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories, LLC (GTL; Tullahoma, TN), has taken an MDA-funded process a step further and is applying its principles to create a technology for efficiently harnessing electrical power and improving the stability of the power grid.
The original process was geared toward producing more stable designs for missile defense components. Now the company is adapting the process to develop a high-energy flywheel system to reduce a phenomenon known as "frequency instability," increasingly linked to failures in the power grid. A flywheel—like a potter's wheel—is a device that effectively stores energy by virtue of its rotational inertia. The energy of a flywheel is released by slowing its rotation. In power-grid applications, flywheels can be used as batteries of sorts—to both store and release energy by being slowed down or sped up at intervals to damp low-frequency power fluctuation.
GTL's proposed flywheel system, which is composite-based, benefits from enhanced design through the company's proprietary process. The system has the potential to improve flywheel performance twofold to threefold in performing fast-response frequency regulation, according to Paul Gloyer, CEO of GTL. Flywheels have the added advantage of zero emissions and low operating costs. In a related future-forward effort, GTL also is developing a renewable energy technology called BluFlo, which will serve as a power system harnessing ocean energy to produce electricity.
GTL provides a range of products and services to government and commercial clients. Offerings include cryogenic tanks, integrated airframes, high-temperature structures, specialty structural composites, rocket-propulsion technologies, aerospace system design and analysis, power-storage solutions, and electricity-generation systems.
