This paper presents the effect on application of the flywheel energy storage system (FESS) for load frequency control (LFC) of an interconnected 2 area power system. To do this, the control characteristics with the FESS were compared with that of the conventional governor controller. The controller for the FESS control and the governor control used a PID type controller. Both the FESS PID controller and the governor PID controller using genetic algorithm (GA) were designed to optimize the PID parameters. The frequency and generation output characteristics with the only FESS controller and with the only conventional governor controller were compared. To verify robust performance of the FESS controller, the computer simulations were performed under various disturbances. The simulation results showed that the FESS controller provided better dynamic responses in comparison with the conventional governor controller.