FLYWHEELS and ENERGY STORAGE

A flywheel, in essence is a mechanical battery - simply a mass rotating about an axis. Flywheels store energy mechanically in the form of kinetic energy. They take an electrical input to accelerate the rotor up to speed by using the built-in motor, and return the electrical energy by using this same motor as a generator.Flywheels are one of the most promising technologies for replacing conventional lead acid batteries as energy storage systems.

So, in other words. During times that your generating more power than you need, you can spin the fly wheel up, so to speak. When you need to recover that energy, you let the fly wheel spin down.

Example of Flywheel/Piston arrangement:
Inertia of the Flywheel helps keep the system going.

To optimize the energy-to-mass ratio the flywheel needs to spin at the maximum possible speed. This is because kinetic energy only increases linerarly with Mass but goes as the square of the rotation speed.

Rapidly rotating objects are subject to centrifugal forces that can rip them apart. Thus, while dense material can store more energy it is also subject to higher centrifugal force and thus fails at lower rotation speeds than low density material.

Tensile Strength is More important than density of material.

Flywheels are about 80% efficient (like hydro)

Flywheels do take up much less land than pumped hydro systems

Fused Silica Flywheels are possible: High tensile strength material allows it to be rotated very fast (100,000 rpm) without flying apart

The model with the small yellow disc tends to stop when the crank and connecting rod are in a straight line ('dead' spots) - because sliding the brass knob exerts no turning force on the shaft. In the model with the big yellow flywheel, it is easy to keep the disc turning, once it has started, due to the effect of the flywheel. The mass and the size of the big flywheel helps resist the slowing down of the model as it is turning.

Beacon Power - the Leader in Flywheel Technology

Frequency Regulation

Flow Batteries:

Excitement over flow batteries derives from their attributes, which combine aspects of conventional batteries and fuel cells. They are relatively simple, efficient, scalable, durable, and can optimize either power or energy output, as desired. Flow batteries can respond in fractions of a second and can cycle rapidly and deeply at high or low power output with minimal battery degradation.