CGDG’s Qinghai branch broke ground Aug. 1 on the flywheel installation in Golmud, in the Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan autonomous prefecture, in partnership with nine other organizations including the China Electric Power Research Institute and Tsinghua University.
Qinghai provincial authorities said the project falls under a National Key Research and Development Program initiative approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
The flywheel system is part of CGDG’s wider Golmud Dongyue energy storage station, a hybrid facility combining 150 MW/600 MWh of grid-forming lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery storage, the 20 MW flywheel installation, and a 5 MW supercapacitor system. Construction on the broader Dongyue project began in April 2026, with commissioning scheduled for 2027.
CGDG said the flywheel architecture combines high-speed and inertia-focused units to deliver millisecond-scale response, addressing the loss of rotational inertia in power systems with a high share of inverter-based wind and solar generation. The company has not disclosed the flywheel installation’s energy capacity, storage duration or round-trip efficiency.
The flywheels and supercapacitors are intended to handle rapid frequency and power swings, while the LFP battery system provides longer-duration balancing and energy shifting over a four-hour window. CGDG said the supercapacitor system uses an all-carbon power-storage device that Chinese authorities described as the country’s first, and the world’s first, 5 MW-class unit of its type, though detailed specifications have not been released.
Qinghai’s large wind, solar and concentrating solar power buildout is driving demand for frequency control, system strength and firming capacity. CGDG said the coordinated multi-technology approach is designed to test how flywheels, batteries and supercapacitors can operate together, reducing high-power, shallow cycling on the lithium battery system while providing faster grid support once Dongyue station is commissioned.
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