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One megawatt of grid storage, 10 big flywheels | Green Tech - CNET News.com
The company's carbon fiber flywheels, which are one meter in diameter, spin constantly at up to 16,000 revolutions per minute--a surface speed of about Mach 2, Beacon CEO William Capp explained Friday. Each 8,000-pound unit can provide 100 kilowatts of electricity for 15 minutes.
Last edited by doug; 06-24-2008 at 07:17 PM.
Mass. company’s spinning flywheels to store, pace electric energy and make grid greener
Beacon Power’s flywheels — each weighing one ton, levitating in a sealed chamber and spinning up to 16,000 times per minute — will make the electric grid more efficient and green, the company says. It’s being given a chance to prove it: the U.S. Department of Energy has granted Beacon a $43 million conditional loan guarantee to construct a 20-megawatt flywheel plant in upstate New York.
Interesting stuff. In the quest to improve the reliability and efficiency of the electrical grid, and reduce its environmental impact, it seems these flywheels will be a big help - but I'm sure this is something that's typically overlooked by those of us who are not in-the-know. Thanks for sharing, Doug.
This isn't that new an idea. One of the datacentre sites that I evaluated for our current project was using flywheels as UPSs. It sounds like this company has refined the technology a little, though.
This shows that some datacentres have installations that are of the same order of magnitude as the proposed demonstration plant.
No, nothing new. I made this thread about a year ago (and another more recently) since grid storage is becoming more important with the increased use of intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.
As a physics guy, I like flywheels since they're relatively simple and something I can thoroughly understand (batteries on the other hand... ). As mechanical devices, I wonder how long they last in practice. These flywheels are a lot like the turbomolecular vacuum pumps I've used. They're happiest at a constant speed, spin in vacuum at tangential velocities above Mach 2, and fail really spectacularly.
Video or it didn't happen!
Really, I can just imagine, and I think it's be cool to see from an "I love explosions" angle.
Of course, in saying "rival Li-ion", we know why it's unsuitable for mobile applications, right? That would make a really funny video, though...
Are you referring to the Gyroscopic effect? Actually, I think I remember there being some buses using flywheels to store electricity.Originally Posted by SByer
The gyroscopic effect can be counteracted by using counter-rotating flywheels. then you can get some interesting effects by having a control to unbalance them. (talk about cornering)
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