Φ Abstract --Energy storage systems have become an essential part of power utilities due to their capability of providing high level of power quality and stability. Flywheel energy storage systems (FESSs) are now employed with numerous grid and renewable energy applications due to their operational merits. Some of these applications are related to fault ride-through and critical load support. Therefore, the reliability of the FESS should be ensured. The main concern of the FESS drive system reliability is the applied machine type and the required power converter. In this paper, an asymmetrical six phase machine is proposed to drive a lowspeed FESS in order to enhance the overall reliability and improve system fault tolerance capability. Different simulation case studies during healthy and faulty conditions are presented using MATLAB/Simulink. The proposed FESS is built experimentally to investigate system performance during both cases. This publication was made possible by NPRP grant 4-250-2-080 from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). M. I. Daoud Dr. Abdel-khalik is currently a lecturer in Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. In 2009, he also joined Spiretronic LLC as a senior research scientist. His research interests are electrical machine design, electric machine simulation, electric drives, Energy Conversion, Renewable Energy and Power Quality, and HVDC. Ahmed M. Massoud (SM'11) received the B.Sc. (first class honors) and M.Sc. degrees from the