The Mechanical Battery Explained - A Flywheel Comeback?
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- čas přidán 4. 01. 2021
- The Mechanical Battery Explained - A Flywheel Comeback? Go to brilliant.org/Undecided you can sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. When it comes to energy storage, our first thought usually is lithium ion batteries. But what if we went old school ... like just spinning things really fast and capturing that kinetic energy, old school. I thought I’d explain an example of a mechanical battery: the flywheel. And are they making a comeback?
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What do you think of flywheel energy storage? Any other tech I should look into? Be sure to check out my video on Small Modular Reactors Explained - czcams.com/video/cbrT3m89Y3M/video.html
Do a video on democratized energy solutions like solshare in bangladesh
I hadn't realised how much this technology had improved!
It would be great to see how the cost of drilling deep holes has changed over time, and how that's projected to impact geothermal. I can imagine cheaper drilling making geothermal economical in far more places. Low-carbon energy with 24-hour availability anywhere on earth . . . if you can just dig a deep enough hole. It could also be a good way to repurpose oil & gas drilling equipment.
I wonder if there is a way of combining kinetic and gravity storage into one device.
@sadimuntakim I completely understand. It's the same issue in my country zambia in africa...the fact that the technology exists is truly inspiring and the optimist in is look for opportunities in this area still...corruption still exists but we have to try to democratise energy distribution if we want to progress as third world nations
We are close to our goal of using a hamster for our energy
😂
From horsepower to hamsterpower, we really have come very far in our ability to miniaturize things
Well, i don't think it's a coincidence that Elon once said that his factory could contain fifty billion hamsters.
Matt - Beacon power is a Boston area (Tyngsboro) company as well. Have you looked at SMEs - Superconducting magnetic energy storage
?
I'm afraid I can't let that happen.
When you mentioned control moment gyros on the International Space Station, those are used to control the station’s ATTITUDE, not altitude. In other words they control the spacecraft’s orientation, not how high above Earth it is.
Glad someone else noticed this too!
Yea I was about to say oh shit we can travel the speed of light on just Solar now lol
@@TarisRedwing well, its a separate technology, but Solar Sails are a thing. There is a Russian Billionaire who wants to build a huge, immensely powerful laser array in a desert somewhere and , having launched on a traditional rocket, a cloud of thousands of credit card sized spacecraft with small solar sails that unfurl. Then at the right moment, hit them all with the laser and accelerate the whole cloud of tony solar sail spacecraft to 0.2 or 0.33 C on their way to Alpha Centurai.
@@robertrainford301 Not just orientation, but other nationalities, too ;-)
You spin your way I'll spin mine.
Interesting stuff. As a matter of interest, the WW2 German Tiger tank's engine is started by a 15kg flywheel. The flywheel is hand-cranked up to a great speed [with much effort] Then a clutch is engaged which turns over the 24 litre, 700hp Maybach engine
Yeah, if You don’t have typical battery they flywheel is ok. You can release a lot of power in one moment but that power disappear DRASTICALLY
it seems that many big engine can be started by cranking it. where they all using similar system?
Would be cool to see a vid just on this video with flywheel start.
I remember seeing/hearing about this solution some years ago. Then I found it strange the implementation was so lacking, thus with a bit of search I found out the same thing that is blocking the wider usage of this technology: the price of installation. Nice touch with the Swiss bus!
Transfer the investiment that has been pumped for the last 20 years in lithium battery technology and you gonna see the difference
Or maybe it’s a conspiracy
In the early days of electricity, Nikola Tesla and other inventors experimented with using flywheels to store energy in a mechanical battery of sorts. The idea was that the flywheel could be used to generate AC power on demand, without the need for a power plant or other external source of energy. However, the technology never quite caught on and was eventually eclipsed by other forms of energy generation.
Now, nearly a century later, scientists are revisiting the idea of using flywheels to store energy. With advances in materials and engineering, it may finally be possible to make the flywheel-based energy system a reality. And if successful, it could provide a clean, renewable source of energy that is close to our goal of using a hamster for our energy needs.
The Dutch operated flywheel powered busses for a while in the 1980s/90s if I remember correctly.
Why is the price of install so high? Just transport of the weight?
I used to work for a chip manufacturing in NY. We had flywheel systems that would backfeed the plant if we lost normal power, and when the wheel fell below a certain speed then it would signal the diesel generators to start up. The flywheel chamber was filled with helium to cut down on air drag
I was thinking about the drag of the flywheel. The bike company Specialized came out with a three-spoke wheel that was insanely efficient. You had more drag turning a page in a book then that wheel spinning.
Magnetic bearings levitate the flywheel which cuts down on the drag too.
@@CashJohnston We had a combination of the magnets and helium
Maybe that's why they are not used for power back scenarios when there's power outages few times during a month or week.
Why helium
Why not vacuum.?
I worked at a coal mine in 2010. They had used a flywheel to buffer the electrical grid from their dragline for many years. They recovered and stored energy in a flywheel when the dragline lowered its bucket. The energy stored in the flywheel was used as the bucket was loaded and hoisted. The flywheel protected the local grid from wild fluctuations as well as reduced the energy costs to the mine because they were able to scavenge energy that would've otherwise been wasted.
@@daviddavids2884 elaborate
@@daviddavids2884 you sound illiterate.
You are full of shit liberal.
alot of hospitals also have these types of flywheels to give the backup system a chance to fire up. As soon as the grid power goes, a fly wheel and generator can hold up the necessary grids in the hospital until the backup generators have started and revved up.
@@catsbyondrepair what does politics have to do with anything? What a shit insult go home child
Just came across this - I remember being in college in the late 1980s and reading about an experimental carbon-fiber flywheel that was manufactured to EXTREMELY tight tolerances- UNFORTUNATELY they found out this resulted in a 'detonation' type failure as fractures propagated quickly through the flywheel- and obliterated their testing lab (nobody hurt).
So, 'high strength materials" isn't always as important as "progressive failure materials" when things eventually break.
Definitely still worth it IMO. You obviously don't intend on the unit failing, and if it does you can just encase each one in the ground so if it does blow up it's contained.
These sort of carbon fibre rotor were gaining popularity in laboratory based centrifuges when I did my PhD in the late 80s. Worst case scenario failure of metal rotors (3 equal sized fragments) could cause the centrifuge to leap about the lab, of the fragments to exit the containment shield within, decapitating lab staff. With a carbon fibre rotor, if the rotor disintegrated, it did so explosively, but to form a very large ball of fluff.
Magnetic suspension and vacuum sealed means they could spin almost indefinitely. I’d be really interested to see what kind of long term storage these things are capable of.
Texas grid has been ruined by "green" energy. Texas is now number one in the world for rate of increase of wind power, due to massive subsidies undercutting reliable sources of power. Unfortunately, wind power output isn't consistent every day every hour throughout the year nor can it be scaled with demand like a natural gas plant that can simply increase or decrease power output by burning more or less gas. Unfortunately, the subsidies make it so cheap that it still drives nuclear and natural gas and other reliable sources of energy under displacing them on the grid. So now Texas that used to be so rich in energy is suffering warnings of brownouts and power shortages. They keep promising that batteries can solve this problem, but the fact is that no batteries exist that can economically store massive amounts of power, and many are extremely environmentally unfriendly when scaled up. So just like Hitler with his "wunderweapons" the left promises battery technology that is always "just around the corner" will solve the problems they create with out of control inflation, commodity shortages, excessive energy prices, and more. They never take responsibility for their actions.
@@BoopSnoot cool dissertation. Too bad I didn’t ask.
@@BoopSnoot Ah yes, I remember when the historically left wing controlled Texas decided to isolate their power grid to avoid federal regulation, deregulated its electricity market, and failed to weatherize their critical infrastructure to the increasingly common extreme weather events, because climate change was a hoax. What fools those liberals controlling Texas are.
@@BoopSnoot the problem with the Texas grid was that it was mismanaged, and wasn't winterized properly, due to mismanagement and lack of warning of the coming storm.
@@BoopSnoot What a utterly absurd take on why Texas's grid is a joke.
Also isn't even yours, but rather something you heard from the texan GOP to excuse their own failings.
The Joint European Torus, an experimental fusion reactor used two 650 tonne flywheels to store the power to start the reactor. It took nine minutes to spin up a flywheel and twenty seconds to slow it down. Each flywheel could output 400 megawatts and was used to supplement the power from the grid for the magnetic containment coils.
Wow, I didn't know that's how they booted up the Torus...cool!
that's about the only legitimate use case for flywheels. temporarily building up energy to dump in a short period of time.
but flywheels just aren't practical in most applications. and even then capacitors can dump that energy even faster.
@@FreebirthBoccara several electrical grids and backup systems disagree with you
Those numbers are mind-boggling
@M A Other systems like battery and redundant power supply is used to but flywheels make a great addition for instand power delivery.
I remember the little toy cars that had a fly wheel you needed to spin up to make go racing across the floor haha
How many children do you need to harvest in the sweatshop?
I loved them !
Oh yeah, keep rolling them back until they make this cracking sound, for max launch power 🤘💯
@@PsychonauticExplorer those that make cracking sounds use springs.
@@ulrichkalber9039 thanks for pointing it out 👍
I remember giant flywheels in the sugar mill 50 years ago. Driven by huge steam pistons, the flywheel smoothed out the rotational motion that did all the mechanical work. They were beautiful but also very dangerous. They had been operating for a century and safety concerns weren't a big thing when built in the 19th century.
Which mill did you work at mate?
@@boiibee2851 Fairymead. Did you work in a sugar mill, and which one?
The thing with a modern flywheel is that there is no need for extreme RPM, you just do the math, run it in a vacuum with a magnetic or some sort of low friction bearing and then figure out your windings to get the current that you desire. Just look at that antique Swiss bus, 6 kilometres at 50-60 km/h. spin it up when you are stopped for passengers and good to go. combine that with diesel electric for backup and our modern energy braking recovery and I can see this being at least 5x more efficient then it was 70 years ago. you can even have a direct mechanical transmission of some sort. when you look at 3000 lb battery pack in a Ford Lightning pick up truck that gives you a lot of inertia at 10x that weight in flywheels in a commercial city vehicle. Combining various energy recovery systems along with just keeping it spinning at top speed while it isnt in use would likely make it last even longer. Also you need no exotic materials, no fire risk, run it at a modest speed in a well designed case to contain any unlikely catastophic failure. It just sounds like a great thing as we have been using flywheels of all sorts for thousands of years (pottery, spinning yarn, wind mills, etc). You look at the massive turbines in hydro electric, the high speed steam driven power plants. It is just a no brainer to perfect what we know instead of looking for rare earths for a 10 year battery. We humans just seem to love to look for higher technology to make things more complex and try to make things "better" instead of looking at simple known tech and making it more efficient. Just look at the electronics supply chain problems, thousands if not millions of cars waiting on a microchip just to make them function but otherwise complete and ready to go. Imagine where we would be with modern transport if for example we could not make our autos run for the want of spark plugs 120 plus years ago. What has happened to that old adage of "Keep it Simple, Stupid"?
Yes. Retiring meant a short meeting near the flywheel and a pushing feeling from behind. Then a falling feeling. Then a crunching feeling.
@@johnmadsen37I was born in 57 and I’ve been retired for over a year. My experiments with flywheels have proven very fruitful and I’ve never been happier 🙏❤️
Amazing content
Im electric engineer and you just make me feel like a young student at college... Just love how you edit and the script... the content.
Its an amazing piece of info.
Thanks
Hear me out, a flywheel made of lithium ion batteries
first thought when he mentioned "the hybrid approach"
Hear me out: A taco which uses Doritos for its shell.
Ah yes, ah yes
Maybe not enough mass in the batteries by themselves but yea.
I laughed.
I work at a hospital,we have two caterpillar flywheel UPS systems for our critical power.Supposed to hold for 30 minutes until the generators spool up and take over.
It shouldn’t take generators 30 min to “spool up” and take over.
@@jbw5485 its a security feature. They don't need that long but what if they don't start due to some mechanical issues, then have time to power down equipment, get out of hazardous areas.
So, the 2 flywheels spin continuously while waiting for an outage?
@@martinkase5842 ok. That makes sense. I would imagine they do regular maintenance and test runs on the diesels. Auto start sequence and all. We have back up diesel gens at the nuclear plant. They start within a few seconds of getting the signal. Sounds like the “in between” spooling flywheel is there as a back up to the back up in case the diesels don’t start. 👍🏼👍🏼 the diesels will start though. Haha
@@greggschuder7478 I am wondering the same thing..
I find this very interesting as we have used flywheel UPS in the IT industry for at least 10 years to ensure that our datacenters stay operational during power loss situations. As they have a limited runtime, there is always a generator of some sort to take over when the flywheel stops spinning. I think that using them for grid storage and power conditioning is a good use of the technology. Thank you for taking the time to discuss it!
Thanks for a great video and your analysis. I've been looking exactly for such cost comparison and forecast for all storage technologies, especially flywheels.
For the ISS, that would be attitude, not altitude.
I’d always considered a motor/flywheel/generator for a home office surge protection system
I was just about to ask the exact same thing! I'm no physicist either but, holding something *up* with a flywheel doesn't seem possible, unless it's got something to do with the station itself moving in a circular arc around the earth, and somehow transferring some of the inertia away from the flywheel.
I don't think so though, I think he means a reaction wheel, attitude like you said.
What the difference between attitude and altitude in this context?
@@remliqa go to school
@@kapekape7580
Wow.. Instead of enlightening a genuinely ignorant person like me on the concept, you decided to be an asshole. I guess school never teach you courtesy .
@@brandonb3279 yeah, what it does is rotate the wheel opposite to the direction they want to rotate the ISS. And they have one such wheel for each axis. It's an alternative to using RCS, since they can power it from the solar arrays, rather than needing fuel shipments. But they do still sometimes need RCS as well, but very rarely. So the added cost in hardware is worth the gained efficiency to them.
04:30 That's a Sprag clutch!! not a bearing, it allows only one direction of rotation. Love your video Matt Ferrel, thanks for putting the time to put this together
Thank you, Ive been trying to figure out what that bearing was called for about 20 years. HP lasers use them on the paper path rollers, and I have been fascinated with them since then
@@malehuman haha glad I could help👍
Yeah and they're draggy too.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. I bet the image was sourced using Google Images and was mislabeled at the source lol. At a quick glance they look similar but I noticed right away something was off. Helps to be mechanically minded hey?
@@Qui-9 Same here.
Can we stop pretending that nobody understands basic math, please? That formula is something for 8th grade physics, everybody and their dog should be able to get that.
It is sooooo good to have a well researched, well balanced, and practical look at these sorts of things. Thank you.
A stack of flywheel storage units up the centre of a wind turbine is something I have always thought would make a good combination.
@@daviddavids2884 what?
that seems great , and maybe if there where a way to directly store the kinectic energy into the flywhells instead of having to convert it to eletrical energy first there would be less of an energy waste
@@lavaot5207 That would require one hell of a gearbox to turn probably about 10 RPM to 30,000/40,000 RPM, the mechanical losses would probably outweigh the potential electrical losses incurred by just directly wiring the flywheels into the output of the turbine
@@richardmillhousenixon You can use steel flywheels... And the power for the tubine already has a gearbox that does that (to generate electricity). I'm thinking that it would be too heavy
@@marshmellominiapple The gearbox that steps up the turbine rotation to the generator rotation turns about 10-20 RPM to exactly 3600RPM in the US (or any country with a 60Hz grid), and 3,000RPM in any country with a 50Hz grid. Still far below the 30,000-40,000RPM or greater needed for effective flywheel storage. And a solid steel flywheel would not be a good idea. Ideally you want a flywheel with a very high moment of inertia, i.e. most of it's mass at the edge, which would mean the best design would be something with a carbon-fiber hub and a ring made of some dense metal. In order of increasing density, common metals that would possibly work are mild steel, stainless steel, brass, and copper
I think the draw of flywheels is they’re such an elegant technology -just a really big perfectly engineered spinning mass- and that’s why I like them. I also like the idea that the solution to the technological age is a mechanical one.
Exactly, comeback of sorts !
The energy density injkoules per kilo is pretty poor.@@priyanks91
Much like with trains, flywheels represent a simpler, older technology, that nonetheless does the job more efficiently than more complex technologies that have superceded them. And just like with trains, it would behoove us, as a society, to pursue more use of flywheels to help our climate and energy woes.
The elegance I see isn't just in it being singular spinning masses so much as the way it turns tensile resistance into power storage and means that any 'super materials' we create are also energy storage devices.
A bit of a slight ulterior motive that probably applies in many cases is not having to consider chemistry directly as something nice, in the same way that being able to write code to filter numbers is nicer than having to spec out an analog filter. Even if it is technically less efficient in itself the ease and familiarity spares consideration of other approaches.
@@Nasrudith I love your analysis.
We should also not forget that mechanical solutions of stored energy, be they kinetic energy or potential energy, have much longer service periods than battery solutions. And then there's the dirtyness of chemical production for batteries, before disposal.
Changing bearings occasionally seems like a much better alternative.
I'd love to see a video from you about residential energy storage alternatives! Also, hydro energy storage.
Really interesting, thank you very much Matt. Much of the detail went in one ear and straight out the other, however the concept of brainstorming every possible solution to create clean, sustainable energy is worth pursuing, even if we have to use something from the stone age.
Your closed captions are so good, thank you for taking the time to make grammatically correct and easy to read closed captions!!!
The video creator just copies and pastes the video script he was reading from into CZcams Studio and it automatically sets the timings with no additional effort
48 years ago in undergrad engineering school I did a class paper on super fly wheels for energy storage. You did a fine job of covering the topic.
LITERALLY [THROUGHOUT ALL REMARKS] In terms of what was understood half a century ago You mean? In several thousand years AT MOST The _UTTERLYABSYMAL_ corruption That has the 'wheels' _FLYING_ small Radius high RPM IS-TO-BE PEEK-ScAnDALMOMENT. It is RELATED-RATE-EQUATIONAL ("RRE"?) 'math' But the radius _SOLVES_ exponential *Exactly* Like the RPM And Increasing the radius Is SUBLINEAR BARGAIN TO SCALE (*****SBTS*****)!
@@arts8302 don't you massively increase the outward force on the components tho by increasing the radius? idk which factors they're balancing exactly and how close to material limits they're running.
@@chrismofer see INDIAN master's thesis for derivative analysis but the mechanical battery is the granite banked ellipticalish valley a simple dimple you spin the looping mass AGAINST. CorrUPTEST investment bank RECENTLY ran numbers for gravity ARTIFICIAL STONE STACKER SCHEME lol and underwrote despite it BEING ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE MORE COSTLY THAN MULTIMILECIRCUMFERENCE-SLOW-SPEED-HIGH-MASS-MAXIMUM-RADIUS/CRUSTAL-MASS-PARTICIPATION HEREAfTER REFERRED TO AS _MMCSSHMMRCMH_
"MM...MH" works so all guns to distract now set IS FACT.
@@arts8302 jeez u ok buddy that was satire right lmao hard to tell sometimes
@@chrismofer deep water is ENERGY laden even if not 'fast' #DWIELEINF
HYDROINERTIAL is NEXT big thing DUH. Molten sodium spun is the
⛽ finishin 🔫
Thanks for this excellent overview! You explained it brilliantly, even I could understand it.
E’r’body gangsta ‘til the flywheel becomes a beyblade.
Thanks for the example of the swiss bus use of the flywheel and how long it could be used. Really tied the usefulness into the rest of the story.
Yeah it's so counter intuitive, I'd have never realized just how much energy that small bus gyro captured.
feels like a great benefit of flywheels is how smooth and easy you go from charging it, to draining it. Haven't looked up the hybrid system you mention in the end. But I would guess they use the flywheel as the primary backup to use, while the batteries only get used during longer blackouts when the flywheel isn't enough. feels like a good way to extend the lifespan on the batteries.
I sounds very promising to me!!...👍👍😁😎
It would likely be more along the lines of using batteries for instant response and the flywheel for longer storage. The Hornsdale reserve in South Australia has a 100MW charging to draining reaction time in the order of 0.1s. It's been playing havoc with the profitability of the extortionist gas backup guys.
@@raymondjones7489 Unless they do something especial the hybrid system isn't different from the grid itself, the grid is a hybrid.
@@autohmae thank you!!👍😊
I just looked up the articles about the hybrid system, it's meant as a replacement of peaker plants, charging when there's a power surplus and discharging when energy demand outweighs the energy supply. The flywheel is indeed used to provide power first, after which the batteries are used. Using this method the batteries go through less charge/discharge cycles, so less battery degradation. It's a very smart way of combining both flywheels and battery storage if you ask me, getting the best of both worlds :)
I have a feeling the cost can't come down because there is no economies of scale like there is for lithium batteries.
youre probably right, climate change is expansive we should get used to it
there might by eos if we optimize mass-production
@@momal0
delusional
@@togetherworksemail "Send him to the infirmary"
Like the tesla turbine proven old tech but scaling it to our needs sounds like no good issue ... (getting materials good enough to withstand the speeds and strain might cost more than ... )
I came across your channel as a recommendation video and now I'm hooked. I love the way you explain how these technologies work without all the maths and physics jargon, I suppose it's Technology for Dummies. Brilliant!
One of the more interesting UPS systems I saw was an electric motor that drove a flywheel. The flywheel had an integrated written pole generator in it. In operation the motor keeps the flywheel spinning and the written pole generator supplies very clean 60 Hz sinewave power to the protected load. The system was designed to supply the protected load for only six minutes. When utility power failed the flywheel would start to spin down as the stored energy in it is used. Not only does the generator output have a regulated voltage, but the frequency of the output would remain at very close to 60Hz. Meanwhile a diesel engine would automatically start upon a utility power failure of one minute or more. The engine would run at a slow speed for three minutes to warm up then throttle up and engage a mechanical clutch. Then the engine would bring the motor and flywheel back up to normal rotational velocity. Once utility power returned for several minutes the generator would disengage and shut off. Once it disengaged the motor would be reconnected to utility power and take over the job of keeping the flywheel spinning.
Hell yes at last some one else who can see the light litterly . Thank you .
My dad was installing these in the 80’s
Also you could handcrank the flywheel if the diesel doesnt work. 😜
@@K0nst4nt1n96 Yes, that's why we hire interns.
@@K0nst4nt1n96 You can also hand crank the Diesel. I have a Farymann Diesel generator that has a handcrank for when the starter doesn't work. Decompress the engine, crank like it is going out of style, release the lever and watch it run. To shutdown, you hold the decompression lever down and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait some more for it to stop turning. The generator, fan blade, and flywheel on the engine will rotate the engine for nearly 5 minutes and if you release it before it stops turning, it fires back up. At 1800RPM it varies only between 59.9 and 60.1 Hz under load. One of them running on CZcams. czcams.com/video/3U52aeWKV50/video.html It looks like it has the small flywheel on it. At 1 minute in you see the decompression lever on the left front corner of the block.
Thank you for helping me understand something so complex. I’m blown away by this flywheel technology it’s absolutely incredible.
This reminds me of pulsars - the type of compact stars that rotate at really high speed (e.g PSR B1937+21pulsar - 38,500 rpm). Giant flywheel in cosmos. Now I wonder about the history of ideas on how we can harvest astronomical bodies' rotation energy. Thanks for the video!
This was a great video of an old technology finally getting the recognition it deserves. IIRC the POTS telephone system in the UK used to use flywheels as a back-up energy source. Another great example was the JET Tokamak in the UK, which uses two flywheels, each of 775,000 kg to generate 400 MW. I read somewhere each time the wheels were discharged, it shifted the building on its foundations.
A quick note on units - kilometres is written km not Km (that'd be Kelvin metres), and the ISO & SI standard is to leave a space between the number and the unit.
For my dad’s senior project in college back in the 80s, he made an electric car powered by fly wheel!
Mind you it was mostly a proof of concept, but still, I’ve always loved fly-wheels since he told me that as a kid.
Wow, did He make a full size electric from flywheel I mean the cars we drive today
He was way ahead of time I guess 👍👍👍
That's awesome!
@@zakyvids6566 Flywheels are not practical for powering moving vehicles, only for fixed power installations. The major problem is that every time you change speed, start to go up/down hill or turn a corner - large torques are applied to the vehicle by the flywheel.
There were some short distance electrical buses used in Europe (1960s?). They had all sorts of problems and didn't remain in service for very long.
Wasn't there an issue with stability when using a flywheel on a moving vehicle because of the gyroscopic effect?
I remember something about that Swiss flywheel bus being very difficult to drive.
Some early KERS systems in F1 used flywheels
I used to work on a Industrial Nucleonics 1180S system for paper machine process control. It used 400hz power but we had 60hz available on site. So we used a motor generator to do the frequency conversion. The unexpected side effect was that the MG set could survive momentary power loss due to rotational inertia.
First time I've watched a video of your's, paused the video to subscribe. Good job!
You cite my friend's and supervisor's work! That is crazy! Small world! @8:58
Thank you for using metric units. Amazing presentation by the way!
I'm not always consistent with that, but trying to get better. Thanks for watching!
Why would anyone talking about science not use metric units? Oh wait...
@@bigboldbicycle Interesting reply. Yep, totally get it.
@@bigboldbicycle They way I see it, there's units use by everyone and units used by those he sent men to the moon. America has gotten by just fine by not trying to be Europe thank you very much. If you want to talk that good stuff, better come backing it up.
Yes, metric is better for STEM fields which is what are used in the US but who frakin' cares what people use in their day to day if it gets that job done. Like why you get so worked up over this stuff?
@@TheRyujinLP Guys like you are rare on the internet. I'm glad I finally found somebody else with some sense.
There's a train called the Parry People Mover that uses a flywheel on a short steep branchline in the UK. Also, regenerative braking, where the power goes back into the grid has existed for about a century on the electric railways, I think initially in Switzerland but it only became really common elsewhere in the last 30 years or so.
Brilliant!! I had never even thought about flywheels as a modern solution to energy storage before this video. Thanks for sharing this information.
Every single energy storage episode is so damn informative...Matt ferrel the battery guy
Thanks!
Awesome!!!👍👍😁😎
@@UndecidedMF just discovered this- is this just your channel or is the discover paying?
But pretty much unrealistic
@@UndecidedMF Hi and Hello.
I gather people for a good cause:
I wanna provide people with Links leading to bad or toxic people.
Mobber, Racists, Sexists, Bullies, more. I got the Links and i
need help with reporting them.
CZcams is in a bad state and i think you heard of that.
Many complain about it, its strike-system and its CEO: Susan.
But... I mean... complaining about the State of the world is nice
and dandy, but... how about acting? Doing something?
So i made a Wiki where i store Links for all to use. Yeah, unorthodox, i
know, but whatever. Its my Try to help.
I know this was random and also overly summarized, but
think about it and consider. You can make a difference.
I tried to explain it as good as possible, but the Wiki will tell and show
you more, i guess.
The place I work at spent over twenty years developing a flywheel system until in 2006 a 300kg one disintegrated while spinning at 13000 rpm. By incredible luck, the people in the workshop had a coffee break when it happened, except for that one guy that lost an eye due to carbon fiber fragments and luckily managed to escape. Mentally the guy never recovered and had to live on a disability pension.
Recently a coworker showed me the scars the flywheel left to the building while it bounced around. It left dents in half-inch thick steel I-beams and in the concrete ceiling, not to mention all the destroyed equipment. They stopped development soon after this accident.
half a inch of steel really is nothing. maybe its a lot for humans
So sad the development has stopped. It's obvious, that if your energy storage dense enough and fail, this energy will quickly be released in a destructive manner. All they had to do was update safety regulations for prototype tests and product operation, that make it impossible for people to enter the zone with working flywheels.
@@rainbowhyena1354 true
Really helpful sir..got good info..along the history of it
Humble but smart
Thanks for your videos
About five years ago a company in Poway , CA. was working on flywheels for energy storage. They had their flywheel in a pit in ground. One day the bearing let go. Needless to say it was a bad day. It jumped out of pit through the roof and took out the corner the building ( concrete tilt -up ). OSHA was not happy. The company went under soon after. P.S. no one luckily got killed or hurt.
No probelm. Next time just make the hole deeper.
Yep, the amount of monitoring sensors on those to pick up early signs of failure... vibrations, frequencies etc... and still miss when it's gonna let go.
Yep, also even if you contain wheel in one place after a failure the energy stored will be released in form of heat melting and igniting everything around
Dude it was obbiously destroyed by the power companies. They dont want people to know
Anything storing energy is going to be, well, full of energy. A flywheel going off-balance or coming loose is akin to a battery shorting out or catching fire. Flywheels are a viable energy storage medium, but preventing them from being a hazard seems like it'd need a quantity of what I think the pros call 'heavy shit' placed between the wheels and anything likely to be damaged by the wheel getting loose.
We had Pyler or Pyle Motor Generators back in the 80’s and 90’s for Computer Rooms. They had massive Flywheels. They were to smooth the Street Power out, and to give a UPS Generator time to come on line, in the event of a Power Outage.
Yep. No idea of manufacturer but I have seen a flywheel system used in place of battery UPS to bridge the time between mains failure and the DRUPS coming online in a Data Centre.
Looking through my Work Diaries, I found out it’s the “Pyle National Company out of Chicago, Illinois USA. We only used Mobile Synthetic Grease, on the Bearings. Since I didn’t want to carry two Grease Guns I used this Grease on all my HVAC Equipment. Work gave me a hard time about using this Expensive Grease, until I pointed out I had Zero Bearing Failures.
@@stevenmoomey2115 Pyle National was a long time electrical component manufacturer and was heavy into the railroad industry. Almost every steam loco in the modern era had a Pyle National steam turbo generator for lighting power and and many passenger cars had clutch/motor/generator units to charge batteries that operated by the wheels when moving and 208/230VAC 3 phase when stationary. So a motor/generator setup from them would be expected. Pyle National turbo generator, czcams.com/video/K9cfWE8H7OM/video.html
@@gravelydon7072 Thanks for the info, the largest of the Pyle Motor Generators was at 50 F Street N.W. Washington D.C. it was such a massive machine, I wonder if it’s been abandoned in place. BTW they had two of them, one smaller, to run a back up computer room..
@@stevenmoomey2115 Depends. Was it in a high rise grayish brown brick faced building? Buildings look too new there to have been around in the 80s. Next time I go thru Union Station I'll have to check.
There was a Popular Mechanics magazine issue from back in 1969, -70, or early-1971 I read while still in High School (I graduated in 1971) discussing how someone built one that was 1800 pounds in his basement. The axis was supported using an electromagnet powered by a 9-volt battery. The article mentioned that the horizontal flywheel was so well balanced that he could start it spinning with a nudge of his index finger. I hadn't remembered this article until after I watched your video; it was 40+ years ago.
The biggest difference I noticed between what I gleaned from your video and what I remember from that aforementioned article is that his flywheel was flat, like a phonograph record, and about nine feet across.
Can you please make a video, comparing all the batteries storage BESS that are out there and available to be deployed now and in the near future such as Li-ion, Flow, Flywheel, Li-Phosphate, Liquid Metal (Ambri) and others, Thank you very much for your great works to educate us.
"Is that a bearing I hear rumbling?" - RUN!
Magnetic air bearing are common now and don't wear out. Also just put the flywheel in a steel case to contain energy.
I worked at a nuclear power plant in the 70"s. A motor generator set with a 2500 lb flywheel between the two. If all else failed the flywheel and generator would supply enough power the rod drive motors to get the control rods fully down. It was my understanding gravity would get to 80 to 90 percent and the generator would do the rest. The system was tested during refueling.
Speaking of Nuclear power plants, what’re your opinions on 4th Gen nuclear power plants? Are they safe enough that we should be considering using them for power generation in place of fossil fuels? I always see nuclear fission as our transition power source until Fusion energy, or something cleaner, is developed. And Nuclear Fission is already extremely clean power generation, at zero carbon emissions in their entire lifetime, and the only CO2 generated from them is when they’re constructed. But I’m told by my mother, who’s a former X-ray tech, and anyone who wants the “Green New Deal,” that Nuclear is the wrong way to go.
@@captainsinclair7954 yes they are safe enough. Always was. Nuclear power is so plainly the path to a solution for our energy needs. There have been accidents in the past, unfortunately, that scared the public. Politics...anyways..
@@captainsinclair7954
This may get long winded but thank you for interest in my comment. I DO NOT LIKE NUCLEAR POWER , BUT if you want to approach zero carbon emissions I see no way around it.
Why I don't like nuclear power (1.) 3-Mile Island this was the first of there nuclear disasters (we were Very fortunate it didn't turn out like Chernobyl : would have devastated the east coast) (2.) Chernbyl 150,000 sq. miles uninhabitable will have to be monitored as long as humans are on earth (3.) Fukushima operated 40 yrs with virtually no problem then
mother nature took it out, will have to be dealt with for a very long time. Japan has 42 operational reactors, They only run 9 of them. Please read up on those disasters.
Now getting to your question. Unfortunately I am not up to speed on the 4th gen, but will get familiar with it. What I have seen thus far, the SMR(Small Modular Reactors) are extremely promising.
Solar. Wind and Battery's are fine but will not meet the electrical demands ever. You have to have a base line for 24 - 7 reliable energy. And in my way of thinking the nuclear is the best choice.
@@dant.3505 "There have been accidents in the past" THERE WILL BE ACCIDENTS IN THE FUTURE.
@@stevereynolds1739 nuclear is the most energy efficient and it should be populated in the future more. Because this is answer to increasing power demand. Production of nuclear plant leaves less carbon footprint (what a buzzword) than solar and wind plants for the same power and take less space
Wow, cool concept. The bus was especially intriguing. Thanks for sharing.
Well Matt, again a very interesting topic. You'd say if you were to put as much time and effort in improving flywheels as in LiIon you should be able to make it competitive within a few decades.
@6:10 it’s not related to “altitude” at all! It controls the direction of the space station (“attitude”) in orbit.
This is easily a 5M subs channel in a few years. Great video. Thank you.
Awesome content, great work on the video, thank you sir
I love this idea of combining older concepts like the sterling engine as well but with our modern advancements in data, technology, material construction 3d printing, batteries, magnetic bearings, ac alternators, superconductors, computer programming, renewable energy. They could find unique places to be used and in unique ways. Not everything has to be large scale. Some things could possibly help moderate home temperature or something, you name it, I'm open to outside the box ideas.
I've been a strong proponent of kinetic battery solutions for grid-scale energy storage for almost 20 years. Great video.
Thank you, I enjoy watching your videos on energy solutions. I would like to see one on gravity potential storage systems, not hydro, solid.
Very good content man, great job!
There aren't enough videos about flywheels. Glad you covered them, especially the hybrid systems - those are where the future of flywheels lie.
two surprises :
1. It even works.
2. Given that it works, It still costs more than batteries.
I suspect they'll have the same issue as flow batteries, initial cost will always be higher due to scale, while they can take some of that back in long term operating costs.
Yeah bcz noones using it and trying to make it cheap.also..they use compostie expensive materials which are also not produced efficiently
@@anandsuralkar2947 Where volumetric efficiency is not a concern, like stationary storage, a cheap brush high-tensile steel wire has excellent tension resistance to flying apart and can be rotated to higher speeds than the old steel high weight rim flywheel designs. The added benefit of tensile designs with lots of elements is that failure is progressive, producing more heat than physical dangers.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978008025471550049X
I think it is the refrigeration needed to keep the bearings cold enough for the superconductors to work, that really pushes up the cost. Then if you've splashed out big for the cooler, you're gonna want the best possible flywheels and you are buying really specialist materials.
Not really surprising that it works given that this is already how the grid regulates itself and has done for a century - coal plant turbines use their rotating mass to smooth the output and stabilise the grid.
I heard an interesting downside from a researcher who had been trying to use a flywheel on a bus project in Germany around 2008. They abandoned the idea after the flywheel exploded in the lab. Apparently it injured a few people, and the researcher told me it was pure chance that nobody was killed. They worked out that the surface of the flywheel was moving at a speed of over Mach 3 and was experiencing huge g-forces (I don't remember the number). All it took was the slightest imperfection in the flywheel material. Once it starts to go, it tears itself apart and releases all its energy in a few seconds... genuinely comparable to a bomb.
Flywheels are a great idea but they are a genuine precision engineering challenge demanding the absolute highest standards of quality and a huge amount of respect.
There are some interesting images on the web involving floor model centrifuge rotors that failed at only around 10 thousand rpm. I'll try to imagine what would happen at mach 3.
There have been companies that installed flywheel UPS systems in series with a standby generator to provide enough ride-through time to spin up the generators. It was a cool idea, but most of the ones I know about have been removed due to reliability issues.
Thanks for the clip. I did not get a sense of how flywheels store energy from your clip.
I'll relisten
CZcamsr: States a very easy equation about kinetic energy and moment of inertia
Also youtuber: it's a lot
Engineers, Physicists and other math based science program degree holders: Ok. YES.
Look into net energy vs. total energy. There is your science homework assignment.
@@cooldudicus7668 you lost me at "look into..." 🤣
There is a Fusion Reactor in the UK that uses a flywheel to start as the fusion reactor requires more energy to start than the grid can supply so they store energy over hours from the grid in a flywheel then dump the energy into the fusion reactor. I love that ancient technology nis being used to start possible power generators of the future.
I've been wanting to learn more about gravity batteries. I'd love to hear your perspective on them
I think flywheels work best as a first-step capacitor, one that stores foremost to the rest.
The durability is there, but in terms of keeping the energy there, I don't think it outlasts friction better than a battery or water.
So pick one to store to after the immediate efficiency of the flywheel is lost
Bio chemical and synthetical chemical energy storage is the best, cheapest and most versatile energy storage as it can be universally harnessed by many machines, heaters and more and if we don't want to or can't use a solar reflector and catalyst array to bypass the biochemical aspect, nature does a really good job of storing solar energy biochemically, it's just a shame a new religion has formed that shuns it's use.
Flywheels would be great for a single home looking to level grid pricing - store the cheap energy of night prices and use them in the day for your A/C. Also, solar and wind can wind up the fly wheel as well.
No. They would not. It’s absurd we are trying to go for wind and solar, instead of time and tested tech like nuclear. We are decades behind where we should be because of fear
@@jamesbizs Really? Very interesting. Nuclear energy is not only highly pollutant and dangerous, it's also incredibly expensive when you remove the SUBSIDIES.
Nuclear power is our only green future.
@@nandodando9695 Chernobyl and Fukushima ring a bell !?
A molten salt reactor using thorium is a solution.
The amount of stored energy goes up by the square of rotation. The amount of centrifugal force also goes up by the square of rotation. Therefore the limiting factor of how much a flywheel can store is the tensile strength of the materiel being used. Carbon fiber is the materiel of choice because of this. It can have a tensile strength of around 200,000lbs/sq in. If one were to use diamond or carbon nanotubes, the highest tensile strength of any known material, its increase to several Million lbs/sq in. For example if one were to have a carbon flywheel the rough size of a water mellon spinning at 30,000 rpm the amount of energy stored could power the car for about 2/3 of a mile. (Ball park calculations) That same size flywheel made out of diamond could spin at 600,000 rpm and power the car to travel several hundred miles. This is due to the power of exponents along with the fact the diamond is about 2x as dense as carbon fiber.
This type of flywheel has many other advantage, not sensitive to outside temperatures, unlimited charge/discharge cycles, small area of displacement, fast charge up times, no hazardous material, and locks up carbon in a solid form.
The main issue with this technology is what happens during a failure. In my example using diamond if you were to calculate the velocity of a fly stuck to the outside of the flywheel its velocity would be about 3x that of a high power rifle. Now lets take the world strongest material and explode it in all directions travelling at 3x the speed of a rifle and you have the making of a deadly bomb which is why if this technology is ever developed it would need to stored underground.
I would have to brush the dust off my books to know the precise effect, but spinning gyroscope will affect the handling of the car. It might make it turn corners better or worse, or create a lifting or down force, depending on orientation and spin direction of the flywheel.
@@joeprizzi407 ask anyone who has owned an r series BMW motorbike. The massive flywheel drives you down into right hand corners and lifts you up out of left hand corners (may have this the wrong way around as it's been a whole since I sold mine)
@@SomeKiwi Not necessarily. It depends how much and how fast is energy released. A flyweel relases all energy immediately if the device is destructed. This is what make high capacity flyweel dangerous. A heap of coal is not dangerous at all. And a lithium ion battery is much less dangerous than a flyweel. Note that 1kg of TNT has an enery of about 1.16 kwh. So a flyweel as drive battery would make a car to a rolling bomb. With stationary applications this is less an issue.
"In my example using diamond if you were to calculate the velocity of a fly stuck to the outside of the flywheel its velocity would be about 3x that of a high power rifle."
It is actualy pretty simple. It releases all the stored energy. And every kwh stored has roughly the enery of 0.86 kg tnt.
@@vornamenachname2625 The advantages of higher velocity with graphene are lost in the higher cost. If you want to go fancy materials use a superconductor maglev track in a loop. Concrete and/or bedrock can support. This can be spun up to multiples of orbital speed. The superconductor can be hybrid SMES and flywheel.
I think it would be cool to see more mechanical/nonstandard energy storage like flywheels, water, non-battery chemical and others.
Thanks. It's good u mention cost per kWh in comparison between different storage tech.
What is missing though is a comparison regarding energy per weight and energy per volume. Can modern fly wheels compete with electric batteries in those metrics?
Surprised you didn't mention the incredible localized danger that flywheels all have in their kinetic energy that is NOT quickly dissipated unless you consider a powerful mechanical explosion as quick. Flywheels once were considered for cars until they realized that, if a car had an accident and it released one of these 200 pound flywheels spinning at 5000 rpm it would escape and crash into other cars like a monster devouring these other occupied cars AFTER the primary accident stopped -AND, if other cars had flywheels then a chain reaction could release those flywheels too. The pent up kinetic energy of a spinning flywheel is HUGE and scary to even be in the proximity of.
Not a problem for stationary storage flywheels. You just dig a hole so the spinning bits are a few metres below ground. If it breaks it just means your hole is now a little wider.
@@kenoliver8913 Sadly there isn't a lot of point in stationary storage wheels though. In almost any large scale measure you can think of other forms of power storage are better be it hydro or weight based. Far better to pump water up and have it flow down to create power than rely on a spinning flywheel. Same for lifting a weight and dropping it.
Fly wheels also suffer greatly over time so it be ill suited towards long term storage. Aka excess power in the summer months from solar to use in the winter.
That's why cars needs to be banned xdxdxdxd
I like the fact engines do use flywheels to keep the cam shaft rotating :)
This is one of those classic cases of a “critique” of energy storage/green energy mechanisms that is so grounded in anti-renewable hostility that the author doesn’t bother to make sure it actually makes sense. Seriously? First, DON’T PUT WHEELS ON YOUR FLYWHEEL AND DRIVE IT AROUND LIKE A CAR. Second? PUT IT IN A CONTAINER (A HOLE IN THE GROUND IS FINE). Sheesh.
Flywheel "storage" is more like capacitors, than like batteries. They are great for balancing and smoothing out power (this is their primary use in mechanical machines, like combustion engine in your car), but they can't go for long periods of time as they can only hold so much energy/momentum. Being mechanical is also difficult to scale.
Oh I was wondering about that.
The video didn’t mention how long they can retain their energy and a quick google search didn’t help either.
Definitely sounded closer to a cap than a battery.
@@PHEEliNUX yes, on the other side a big lithium battery let's say the chem used in tesla cars also loses a lot of energy each day in these capacities.
Just as with those new modular nuclear reactors, you can scale flywheel storage systems by operating many of them in parallel. It is even possible to transfer energy from one module (flywheel) to the next to smooth out / equalize their load.
Matt thank you for a short but informative intro even for a non engineer like me.
you were so right in a video you said all energy solutions together might help future's energy needs
20 years life time is a vast understatement, replace one baring and you are set for another 20 years
I'm not sure a magnetic bearing would need replacing, would it? No contact, no friction... What is there to wear out?
Do permanent magnets degrade over time? 🤔
Permanent magnets do in fact wear out over time. Electromagnets too but much more slowly.
@@EleanorPeterson They last a long time. In 100 years they will only lose about 1% of their magnetism in proper settings.
@@HELLO7657 steel (a ferrous metal) completely resists fatigue under a certain limit (I think it's 20 MPa). So we could make the load bearing part out of some steel alloy.
Maybe you covered this and I didn’t understand, but what is the cost per kWh averaged over the lifetime of a flywheel (Including installation and eventual recycling, and long life expectancy) as compared to Li ion ? It’s not just kW installed, but total kWh delivered that make this worthwhile or not.
The recyclability of their components is a huge factor that gets overlooked. Lithium batteries are expensive to recycle to the point that it's not even profitable in most cases, whereas an all steel flywheel could be sold as scrap metal at the end of its lifetime. These high tech composite flywheels are cool and all, but a cheap reliable steel (or other basic metal) one would be ideal.
@@fortunefed8719 Id rather make one that looks like a bike wheel with steel at the center and depleted uranium where the rims of the tire are to maximize the angular momentum. Probably too costly though so Id revert to 12 barrels of water connected to steel connected to a center ring that rested on magnetic bearings. Not much is cheaper for adding a lot of mass than water. Maybe dirt?
@@Wemdiculous Water isn't very heavy for the space it takes compared to alternatives, including, as you said, dirt.
@Clarence Thomas If you fill an electric train with ore, and power it up a mountain side when you are generating excess, and then release the train when you need the power back, you've essentially done the same thing as the flywheel but on a massive scale.
The "engine" acts as a generator when coming down the mountain.
@Clarence Thomas except that it's already been trial run in Nevada. Anywhere you have a rail system and a reasonable incline, you have a ready made, inexpensive, reliable and efficient storage system. Just add electricity and an electric engine.
I'm addicted to your intro song but now I hate the song but I'm still addicted to it.
My brain literally releases dopamine when I hear it
Thank you for explaining what rotating mass is in 11 minutes 🙏
That flywheel bus was awesome!
the problem with flywheels is that if used in a car as a battery, if massive enough the flywheel will make the car a giant gyro, making it extremely hard to control/turn xD
If you have 2 flywheels spinning in opposite directions the forces will cancel eachother out
@@henkkees7753 does it also take into account horizontal/vertical alignment or just wich way it is spinning?
As it happens, I've wanted for years to use a flywheel for storing PV solar energy. But I haven't figured out a DIY flywheel design that will store tens of kWh to power my home for a few days (in any weather). :-)
Thanks for a good overview of the current state of flywheel tech!
I've also been thinking about a possible DIY solution. I imagine that a good first step will be to find a source for good magnetic bearings, as any inefficiencies in a small scale installation are going to make it ineffective.
Williams developed a flywheel for F1, but never used it. Audi did end up using it (the Williams developed flywheel) in the LeMans cars you mentioned, however flywheels are no longer used in any form of motorsport.
In the 1980’s there was an article I read, about an older man who had converted a small car to electric. He powered it, with small magnetic bearing, kevlar flywheels that were evacuated. He demonstrated that they were safe, by showing that if the flywheel were to come apart, due to a breach in the vacuum, the energy would turn the laminated Kevlar filament instantly into what looked like cotton candy, friction of the cotton candy against the inside of the aluminum vacuum vessel dissipated the kinetic energy and danger as heat and windage, allowing quick deceleration of the failed gyro momentum wheel. The speed of his mini gyros had the speed of the rim of the gyro moving at faster than the speed of a bullet. The article was. In one of the following magazines. Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Popular Electronics, Mechanics Illustrated,
I was impressed then, and wonder if a couple of these gyro units in the frunk of a Tesla, could seriously extend the range of a Tesla by lightening the amount of batteries it would need to carry.
Sounds very interesting!!!!...I love the interest in this technology!!!👍😁😎
flywheels are kinda heavy
@@pasticcinideliziosi1259 not a high tech Kevlar one designed for vehicle use. The weight of this one was 100 lbs for the entire assembly. The flywheel was a Kevlar and epoxy form. Today, it would probably be carbon fiber, as well as the Vacuum housing.
On of the downsides of Flywheels energy storage for vehicles is that it is essentially a gyro, which resists motion. This means usually they make it really hard to steer.
Whatever happened to the Chrysler Patriot? Not the Jeep, the flywheel/turbine powered race car that ran on LNG.
I used to install telephone exchanges, a few of the sites had flywheel power backup buried in the ground.
I half expected some clockwork spring here for energy storage but this is also good.
Thinking about it - what about springs for energy storage?
Beautiful! Though you wouldn't want it in anything that requires movement with maneuverability - those buses were difficult to steer and you also wouldn't want to crush it into anything...
I’d love to see a comparison of flywheel batteries to gravity batteries!
How about a flywheel gravity battery ?
Omg the Yoyo battery!
Love the hybrid idea. I think as soon as production ramps up and economy of scale kicks in we will be seeing more of them
Hybrids just makes it complicated. More batteries and inverters remove the benefits. Very similar to cars in that sense.
In my childhood I was amazed to see flywheel toys dnt need battery's or charge or winding key ....then saw in vcr heads n casset player decks .....it provides smooth running of tapes good to see it back
Small note on the use of flywheels on spacecraft, in the video you said they helped the spacecraft maintain "altitude" the only way to control altitude in space is with thrust or force that a flywheel cannot provide, they do however provide attitude stability to keep spacecraft in the same orientation for either fixed views or to keep from tumbling in space. Attitude adjustments can also be made by thrusters however thrusters affect altitude since you are changing the orbital velocity. Using a flywheel as a gyro doesnt change orbital velocity but does add to the "controlability" of a spacecraft.
In the 1970's, these were considered the hot, upcoming technology. Scientific American had a major article. Besides cost, potential for catastrophic failure remained an issue. Like fusion, these always seem "just around the corner"...
Where volumetric efficiency is not a concern, like stationary storage, a cheap brush high-tensile steel wire has excellent tension resistance to flying apart and can be rotated to higher speeds than the old steel high weight rim flywheel designs. The added benefit of tensile designs with lots of elements is that failure is progressive, producing more heat than physical dangers.
I read that article by Rabenhorst!
@@waynerussell6401 Radial does sound better. (Even then they were proposing advanced fibers-still wound around though-that would become a “tangled rat’s nest” upon failure, rather than a fusillade of projectiles...)
Priceless channel, 100 times better than school, fresh and useful information, great execution, 10 out of 10 hands down.
Thanks!
Great video! One question still remains unanswered for me: how long can you store energy in a flywheel unit? How long does it take until you lose 50% of the energy? An hour? Few hours?
Theoretically? Forever (--> Newtons first law)! Practically however, it depends on how well the flywheel unit is made: the tube has to be completely sealed and contain a near perfect vavuum, the bearing/maglev system has to induce as little friction as possible and the mass has to absolutely balanced. All of that is the reason those things can be/are so expensive - at least when you aim for a high efficiency. A rough estimate for current, commercially available flywheels systems for mass energy storage purposes is about 5% self discharge per day (Li-ion battery: ~2% per month).
So to answer your question: it would take about two weeks for a fully "charged" unit to drop to
@@nicoj9984 thanks for elaborating on that. I had expected a much higher self discharge rate.
@@nicoj9984 it is high loss for long term, so it is good for daily use, many number of cycles
@@makantahi3731 In the context of grid storage, that's exactly what they are intended to do: They aren't meant to store huge amounts of energy for a long time, their job is to "smooth out the curve" of renewable energy sources over a short(er) period. They will, for example, store some of the energy a solar array generates during the day when there is lots of sunlight and then release it during the night when there is none.
My area of (some) expertise however is the use of flywheels as uninterupted power supplies (UPS) for bigger datacenters:
Here the main advantage of flywheels is that they can discharge their stored energy very, very quickly while chemical batteries are comparatively slow. So if you need lot's of power (Im talking megawatts) for just a few seconds to keep operations running until either grid power is restored or a buckup generator has ramped up, you would need a shit-ton of battery cells to deliver that much power at once - or you use flywheels and save a lot of money, space and maintenance.
Well, it might be a competitor for batteries in some circumstances, but this is not even close to the sort of price to solve the seasonal energy storage problem. it's good that you covered this reality, some people really are ignorant of how far we are away from a cost effective solution on that front.
Until then - nuclear needs to be part of any zero carbon grid.
Nuclear power is even less cost-efficient than solar+flywheel (levelized cost of unsubsidized energy):
Nuclear power: $168/kWh
Solar Power: $35/kWh
Flywheel storage: $32/kWh
(This assumes that the flywheel is discharged daily, 365 days/year, in order to balance out peak demand. It gets more efficient if used more frequently, but that is unnecesarry considering it already outperforms nuclear power)
@@Ramschat These figures are nonsense. Solar power is completely unsuitable in many parts of the world, such as northern Europe and Canada.
@@viron6734 Wow... The arrogance. You, some rando on the internet, are just going to casually dismiss the insights of the world's experts on this topic based on 0 data.