Flywheel Energy Storage

[deader]

Durability is a plus, though there are Edison batteries 50 years old, and maybe some 100 yo NiFe batteries still exist. A bit strange they went out of fashion, though supposedly some companies are starting to make them again.

Flywheels are great for short-term buffering, to level out daily fluxations, but don't seem to be used much beyond handling peak-demand intervals, and absorbing the energy of decelerating trams (when electric grids can't handle such loads).

Wonder what the round-trip energy loss for a flywheel is, after one week or one month. Can't be great, and at some point it's zero.

As interesting as flywheels are, it seems like some inexpensize battery chemistry breakthru will eventually obviate them.

In fact, googling reveals a new "Iron Air" battery. Let the battery battles continue!

New 'iron-air' battery stores electricity from renewables for days

The "Iron Air" battery seems to be a legitimate prospect:

"Form Energy was founded in 2017 by Mateo Jaramillo, former head of battery development for Tesla, and MIT professor and battery scientist Yet-Ming Chiang.[3]"

Form Energy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[eXodus]

Flywheels are great for short-term buffering, to level out daily fluxations, but don't seem to be used much beyond handling peak-demand intervals, and absorbing the energy of decelerating trams (when electric grids can't handle such loads).

Wonder what the round-trip energy loss for a flywheel is, after one week or one month. Can't be great, and at some point it's zero.

really doesn't matter when you got a large enough load which is intermitted.

Think about any industrial process which needs a ton of power for only a few minutes - aluminum smelting or something.
Instead of running a very expensive 100KV powerline out to that business - you install a flywheel - spin it up slowly and and then discharge quickly.

That very expensive powerline will not be used for 98% of the day. So you can get away with a much smaller line.

You can apply this to any sort of application with intermitted loads. Instead of sizing up the transmission capacity - you install local storages.
The North American power grid is like only 60% efficient in getting power from the Plant to a business.

Pretty easy to beat that- when a flywheel does 80% - that's already much better.

 

[MurphyGuy]

Amber Kinetics is a bust.

I've been trying to contact them for 3 weeks without any luck. Called, emailed, left messages.. no response.

They'll be out of business shortly. Every company that starts up by not answering their phone goes out of business.

 

[curiouscarbon]

Amber Kinetics is a bust.

I've been trying to contact them for 3 weeks without any luck. Called, emailed, left messages.. no response.

They'll be out of business shortly. Every company that starts up by not answering their phone goes out of business.

house bank active thermal regulation time?

thanks for trying with that company

 

[MurphyGuy]

house bank active thermal regulation time?

thanks for trying with that company

From all the media releases I was reading, the cost for 32kWh of storage was going to be around $9000 and have a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years.
I'm good with that and would have given them a check, and being that I'm a residential application on a small hobby farm outside a small town where the grid goes down 5 times a year, it could have been a great opportunity for their marketing.

I suspect their product has lots of problems or there's some kind of financial scam involved. Why wouldn't a company want to make sales? Even Tesla would answer their phone when their Power Wall came out with a 2 year wait.

 

[curiouscarbon]

From all the media releases I was reading, the cost for 32kWh of storage was going to be around $9000 and have a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years.

holy smokes!

 

[myles]

we don't need storage right when the sun goes down usually though, better would be some sort of torsion or spring wound flywheel that is on a lock and only releases energy when the batteries get low

head spins about what kind of off the wall ideas and how safe this would be hahaha

if you've ever seen a garage door spring break, just imagine a two ton flywheel on a spring letting go :D

 

[mapsofilti]

if you've ever seen a garage door spring break, just imagine a two ton flywheel on a spring letting go :D

I would probably want to bury the system in an underground vault if more than a coupe kWh... That is an excessive amount of kinetic energy.

I was about to open a new thread with this exact subject, but I see it is already being discussed. I am looking into flywheel energy storage for my estimated night time usage (~ 2 kW all night).

I am curious to hear if anyone has discovered other new solutions on the market!

 

[Mart Hale]

NASA Testing 5,000 MPH Space Slingshot SpinLaunch—Here's How It Works

The up-and-coming technology could one day see rockets launched dozens of miles into the sky from a giant spinning wheel on the ground, saving fuel.

www.newsweek.com

 

[Andrewr05]

NASA Testing 5,000 MPH Space Slingshot SpinLaunch—Here's How It Works

The up-and-coming technology could one day see rockets launched dozens of miles into the sky from a giant spinning wheel on the ground, saving fuel.

www.newsweek.com

Holy eff... I know they're used to literal "Rocket Science" at NASA but imagine the calculations necessary to figure out when to release that so it has the right parabolic arc when going off of that at 5,000mph.