Flywheel reinvention revolutionising our power grids!
Flywheels are an ancient technology going right back to the potters wheels of 3,000BC. But this simple technology is now being developed to provide kinetic inertia that can help stabilise the voltage frequency of utility grids around the world. So could this be another step on the way to full grid decarbonisation in the coming years?
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I love things that are not called "game changers" or "disruptive technology" because they usually just work. Like the Idea of more trains.
But this could be called a revolutionary technology
@@michaelharrison1093 Well I suppose it COULD but that's really putting way too much spin on it.
@@grindupBaker I should stop this at once, but I guess I'll just roll with it.
It's not a game changer... It has the same efficiency as a tesla megapack, but the megapack can sit for days without losing any energy, It costs 6x as much per kWh as a tesla megapack, and the tesla megapack is about the most expensive large scale battery storage out there. And that is the projected cost of the flywheel when produced at volume, at which time the project cost of grid scale battery storage will be 30x less. So while it would have been a good idea if it had rolled out en-masse a decade ago, it is no longer is competitive.
If it's not a "game changer" then it's probably been around long enough to be optimized by engineers so they are cheaper, more reliable, and safer.
Just a quick general comment: Dave provides one of the best, top-notch coverage of current energy/environment related news and comment that I think I've come across on the net (similar channels good channels _Undecided with Matt Ferrell_ , others) . Dave's channel is current, detailed and accurate, balanced, no-nonsense, very professional with an occasional dash of humor without being tedious or ridiculous and without annoying 'commercial interruption' or irritating and uncecessary music intos. Dave's _Just Have a Think_ is one of the best.
I agree. This is my one go to channel that I never forget to tune in for. I've shared many videos and always get good responses. People like the straight forward and concise presentation.
This channel is excellent. Undecided with Matt Ferrell, however, isn't as good as JHaT. Matt Ferrell has unfortunately posted content that has major practical and scientific issues, notably videos relating to solid hydrogen energy storage solutions.
@@doomguy1001 Yeah, Matt is a lot less critical toward his content and seems to post pretty much whatever without doing proper fact checking. JHaT is a much more reliable and impartial channel that I never hesitate to recommend to anyone.
Happy 2023! Agree on Dave's channel (and Matt et al) Rosie's channel is good too (but sometimes uncritical nowadays) I think it is probably about resources; time and access. We really appreciate the good news when it's real!
They all seem like very informed channels until you hear what thunderf00t has to say in the subject
In my former career, we used flywheels to manage fast acting power transients to minimize battery discharges of our UPS systems. It worked and lead acid battery longevity was marginally increased but the system is is tricky because loads are rarely stable. The result was somewhat unsatisfying because depending on the load, the flywheel/battery system often competed for the same job thus efficiency suffered. The market moved to LIon which satisfied the desire for longer battery life. Now that LIon batteries are projected to be less economical to emerging storage systems, sodium based type batteries, and with improvements in control systems for the DC portion of these systems, flywheels are getting another look. We’ll see if they become more desired in the future.
As a distribution network engineer I have seen quite a variety of rotary UPS installations on customers' premises over the years and I never failed to be impressed at just how much usable stored energy there was in a relatively small volume. I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near a support bearing failure!
@@protectiongeek Understandable but as is the case with most if not all energy storage systems.
@@protectiongeek But it is the total energy stored in the box- typically a Li-ion battery setup with the same amount of stored energy will be more dangerous. The chemicals and the fire that will accompany the failed Li-ion batteries are much more dangerous.
And having worked with these systems you're probably aware that flywheels are much more practical in a stationary system. You can have a huge heavy flywheel in one spot, that doesn't require energy to move it from place to place. If used in an electric car, part of the energy in the flywheel would need to go toward relocating the car.
Flywheels will never be used as energy storage solutions. The systems currently in operation do that as a vanishingly small marginal benefit, but that is not their purpose.
Dave, The South Australia grid provides an excellent example of what can be achieved with a few synchronous condensers (Fly wheels). SA has had access to large amounts of solar and wind generation which means that at times it could theoretically run at 100% renewable. However AEMO has placed a requirement for a certain amount of synchronous generation in the energy mix as a contingency for any grid disturbances such as the separation of SA from the rest of the Australian grid. Until recently they would dispatch around 20% of the load as Gas generation and at times order gas generators to stay on line despite falling spot prices. In order to avoid the need for this expensive generation they commissioned 4 Syncons which are now currently operational. These machine spin up and provide the same inertia service as the Gas generation without the cost. It's seems like the Gas dispatch is now below 5% in these high VRE scenarios. In recent days they hit 100% renewable generation for around 10 days continuous. Of course SA also has 2 Grid forming inverters as well, originally at Dalrymple and now also Hornsdale. At the time they made the Syncon decision I don't think the GFI technology was there. I am not sure it would be the same decision today.
Synchronous condensers do provide inertia resources but are principally embedded to provide reactive power control where penetration of renewables is high.
Excellent detail Greg. Do you have a comment on viability of inverters providing inertia, making need for synchronous condensers redundant ?
@@samjohnston4945 I understand it is more to do with cost with an article on Renew Economy saying one twenty-fifth.
@@samjohnston4945 Here is a link with a knowledge sharing report about the Dalrymple Battery. www.electranet.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ESCRI-SA-Final-Knowledge-Sharing-Report-March-2021.pdf As I understand it this Battery forms a voltage (Grid Forming Inverter) so any changes in the grid voltage or frequency result in a virtually immediate reaction similar to a synchronous machine. The report quantifies this inertia effect for the Dalrymple battery at 200MWs compared to 5400MWs requirement for the State. At 8MW/30MWh this is a relatively small battery at the end of the grid so its impact is modest. The following article describes the latest initiative from ARENA to establish 8 large grid forming inverters throughout the NEM which will substantially improve the inertia of the NEM. arena.gov.au/blog/arena-backs-eight-big-batteries-to-bolster-grid/ As I understand the Hornsdale battery in SA is now at 150MW/194MWh and has been upgraded with Grid Forming software. The article below states it can now deliver 2000MWs of inertia services. www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2022/07/27/hornsdale-big-battery-begins-providing-inertia-grid-services-at-scale-in-world-first/ So to answer your question, there is not so much discussion of adding new synchronous condensers for inertia. That said the Queensland Government is proposing to convert some of their large coal turbines into Syncons. progressively as energy security is achieved starting from 2027. www.epw.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0030/32988/queensland-supergrid-infrastructure-blueprint.pdf
@@gregpaulsen9088 Thank you Greg. Excellent detail. Really appreciate your time putting the response together. Will have this in the back pocket, ready to whip out & use with the many disinformed family & friends that believe the power grid will fail, due to renewables.
An important reason for the use of flywheels is that that can simulate an important characteristic of rotating generators, that of inertia. Dave mentioned inertia but did not explain it's significants as it is a bit tricky. Rotating power generators typically produce AC at the frequency of the grid. If grid frequency falls the rotating mass of the generator puts energy in so resisting the frequency drop and vise versa if the frequency rises. It's a head ache for grid operators as more and more generation is replaced with DC sources that are then inverted to AC by electronic equipment as they do not provide the frequency stabilization of rotating machines. That's where fly wheels come in, not just as another way to store electricity.
Are you sure ? BESS is Battery Energy System Stabilization. The inverters on these DC sources are computer controlled and should be invisible to grid operators. I don't know a lot about it. But that sounds logical. Why would people be involved ?
Ahhhh…before they hit the grid DC sources are inverted to AC …
@@danharold3087 you are correct in so far as the response time of BESS is extremely fast and is automatic. However, inverters are (usually) limited in their ability to deliver high fault currents without making their designs uneconomical. The use of the inertia of a rotating mass to provide 'fault ride-through' means that more conventional and mature technology of synchronous generating plant can be used to provide network stability and also respond to reactive power demand. Modern BESS and so-called synchronverter systems are starting to make serious inroads into the availability of grid-forming inverter network support but they've got a bit to go before they can compete with the inertia of four 660MW synchronous machines at a conventional large power station!
@@protectiongeek Thank you. Power engineering is not my field. Not saying I am correct. There is always a danger in using logic when one is looking in from the outside. I can see where what you say is true if one attempts to frequency stabilize with too few battery units. Not so much with the huge arrays of batteries, each with its own inverter, being installed around the world.
A utility I used to work frequently had their generators run in "phase shifting mode" where the mechanical inertiia of the generators would help to smooth brief grid fluctuations. In addition and that's why it's called phase shifting mode - generators in this mode also can produce inductive or capacitive reactive power to balance the grid. A generator that's disconnected from the grid and with it's turbine evacuated from water will slow down to a stop from its nominal rotation rate of 333⅓ rpm within about 15 minutes. So this is not a full blown modern flywheel solution but the effect is known and it's being used to stabilize the grid daily in a power plant that's now about 90 years old.
I hope these flywheels don't literally fly as happened at a military communications site which used a flywheel to keep the station going in the event of a power outage until the standby generator was brought on-line. The flywheel flew through the generator hall roof when a clutch failed.
Your pronounciation of the (for foreign speakers) rather impossible name was excellent. Compliments
Flywheels and sand batteries - I love the simplicity of these inventions.
what is a sand battery?
@@janami-dharmam A clever way of storing heat. KZhead has a video on it.
Enjoyed many of your videos. This one reminds me of a flywheel my friend added to his bike in around 1970. One lever used the flywheel to brake/stop the bike and a second to use the energy to accelerate the bike up to about 25 or 30 percent of the original speed. A fun experiment.
Sounds great. Do you remember how much weight this added to the bike?
Tom Stanton did a similar thing too, it's pretty interesting
Very complete, but could've included a few physics concepts. Energy stored increases with the square of the spinning speed. The main limiting factor is tensile strength.
Yes, so the larger the diameter the more energy (m*v**2/2) per unit of tensile strength (m*v**2/r).
That is why carbon fiber flywheels have the highest power density
Every major airport has been doing this to “keep the lights on” reliably for decades. “No-break” generators are usually only activated when critical weather is expected, but they were tested regularly for functional operation, back when I was a tower ATC in the 80’s.
Before I worked for an electric company (started in 1984) many of our remote comm sites had Micropower (tm) APUs. These things were a motor-generator pair with a propane powered generator coupled to it. In the event of loss of commercial AC the propane generator was coupled to it via a flywheel and (in theory) the AC was delivered without a hiccup.
One of the hydroelectric turbines at Cruachan Power Station is now being permanently used as a flywheel to stabilise the grid frequency.
Is Cruachan in China?
@@terencefield3204 Scotland
But flywheel design and turbines are completely different. Most flywheels tend to be relatively light but run at a high RPM. The direct advantage of using the turbine as a flywheel is that you have have an integrated generator.
This is traditionally what has always been done. In the New Zealand electric grid , which is mainly hydroelectric , the Maraetai power station on the Waikato River was the generator that all the other station's frequency were synchronised to.
@@janami-dharmam Since energy storage is proportional to mass, flywheels need to be heavy.
It was nice to hear your spin on it!
In a thermal power station (coal, nuclear, oil…) the steam turbine rotor typically weighs about 10 tonnes and the alternator rotor around 15 tonnes - all spinning at 3000 rpm synced to the grid. Usually the alternator operates in an atmosphere of Hydrogen to reduce friction. This really helps with short term stability. Obviously solid state inverters driven by solar or wind don’t have this inertia so need to replicate this mechanical inertia.
My point exactly and not explained in the video.
I think they either use a vacuum or some other inert gas like Nitrogen rather than Hydrogen.
Now what? It’s electrons moving to make a magnetic field that will light a lite bulb or charge an EV or turn a motor. What’s the connection for solar generated electric power to the need for a spinning fly wheel? Great for storage to keep the grid power smooth. Actually when one simply considers the percentage of time vehicles are just taking up space, all EV’s should be hooked up charged no less than the optimal level to maintain the grid think school buses with just double large size batteries-for all any emergencies in wherever community that school bus is parked at! Why have batteries that sit 75% of the time, at least, that can’t be utilizing those batteries to the most work they can do in their life spans! So just pissing away the Earths energy!
@@smoothjamie4046 Actually Hydrogen is used because it has a low density leading to less friction and also it has the greatest thermal conductivity of all gases so it’s best for cooling.
The control circuit in solar inverters can easily respond quick enough to counter transient loads.
I did some work in a nuclear power plant. They used a 2500 lb flywheel for emergency power for rod drive motors. During an emergency and lose of all power the flywheel would provide enough power to the rod drive motors to get the reactor control rods all the way down. The set up was, a small motor/generator was coupled to a flywheel which was coupled to the rod drive motors. During normal operation the motor/generator would run continuously. With total black out the control rods would fall about 90% of the way then the flywheel would provide enough power to the system to get the control rods the rest of the way.
On a much smaller scale, flywheels ("flywheel battery") are being manufacturered for computer rooms. They allow the UPS to run for a few minutes until a generator can be brought up without requiring batteries.
Dave, Thanks for raising the flywheel subject. My understanding is that the retirement of conventional generating plant - with its inbuilt spinning inertia - is causing a lot of concern over grid frequency. One point that you didn't mention is that synchronous generators are directly connected to the grid without intermediate power electronics - unlike battery storage. Most grid faults have a duration of around 100ms (before a breaker trips) and these directly connected generators have the mechanical oomph to push through it. This is because their windings are not current limited in the same fashion as power electronics. It is important to differentiate between the need for grid stabilisation and fault tolerance and the completely different need for deep storage to facilitate intermittent generation from solar and wind.
Great Dave, thanks. Keeping it simple is best for most things with moving parts. This application seems ideal. Best wishes for 2023
Data centres have been using flywheel units for backup power for well over 20 years. I don't know about earlier but when we were designing colocation centres in 1999-01 they were a viable option, developed if I remember aright in germany.
Yep. 🙂 I remember watching an Open University programme (on the BBC in the UK) about flywheels in the 1980s. It showed a system used by the French national telephone company to provide emergency backup power. The flywheels were solid steel cylinders about 500mm long and 150mm in diameter, weighing around 350 kg. Mounted on magnetic bearings in an air-free enclosure, they ran at 12,000 rpm. I think the energy storage was given as 7.1 megajoules, which was described as the equivalent in kinetic energy of an average family car travelling at 250 mph. Because of the potential danger of a malfunction and disintegration, the enclosures were buried in pits underground to contain the angry beasts.
They don't provide long-term backup power. Their purpose is stability - they only have to keep the power running long enough for the generator to start up, and handle any brief voltage drops or spikes on the grid, or a sudden surge in load.
I saw the bus example near the start of this video. In the West Midlands we have a little "Parry People Mover" running between Stourbridge Junction and Stourbridge Town rail stations. I heard someone say it runs off a Ford Focus engine because it of course makes use of the engine to store energy when it's stopped at a station.
Thank you for giving attention to the solutions that use basic kinetic forces. PS. Your pronunciation of "Heerhugowaard" is actually very good. Only our hard G (throat clearing) was missing, but that can be expected from any non-Dutch speaking person.
I grew up used to Afrikaans pronunciation and made an attempt only to find this comment and laugh and laugh, because I got the whole thing wrong except for the hard G. Gotta love how completely different the accent of that creole is from its parent language!
@@TheLaughingDove The Welsh know how to do it.
Flywheel expert here. As a child I had a steamroller ( about 30 cm/ 1 ft ) long which ran with real fire and steam. To start it moving I had to give the flywheel an initial impetus.
Happy New Year everyone and thank you Dave for yet another great video! More than 10 years ago I was working on a datacentre project and wanted to use diesel power generators that had integrated flywheels as a way to get rid of UPS batteries. The idea is that a major datacentre only uses UPS batteries as a bridge during the transition from the grid power to the power supplied by diesel/gas/... generators. We are talking about seconds from the moment when the power grid fails to the moment when the power generators have kicked in with a stable power supply. Instead of using batteries for this, flywheels would be more than capable of providing enough power for a smooth transition. The downside was that generators with flywheels were more expensive and you would have to have regular maintenance of the flywheels, while also needing to switch to power generators even in cases of relatively short power cuts. On the other hand, going away with batteries was a huge plus - batteries need a separate climatised room, they need to be replaced every 3-5 years, depending on the number of cycles and eventually there are expenses related to old battery disposal. Those are huge savings if you can avoid using batteries. Nowadays, the ecological aspect is even more pronounced when there is a shortage of lithium and other rare earths. We were also looking in some other ways of being efficient, like using excess heat in winter for local orchards and residences, heat pumps, solar panels... Unfortunately, the project never materialised because of local political instability and hence the reluctance of the investors to go on with the project. Therefore, I have no first-hand experience on how the technology stacks up against UPS batteries and if there are some other issues that we hadn't foreseen. I would really like to hear if there are people out there with hands-on experience, as I am actually quite surprised that this technology hasn't picked up. Either there are issues that I am not aware of or this technology needs to be marketed much more. If this can work, then you can imagine what savings could be made all across the world and the number of batteries that we would not need anymore (and think about energy wasted on mining for the ores, production of batteries, cooling the battery rooms and finally on recycling and thus all the pollution that would be avoided).
This was done successfully at Grumman Aircraft in Long Island, NY. They had a large 3 phase motor connected to the AC line power which spun a large flywheel which was also connected via a clutch to a large diesel generator. In case of AC line power failure a contactor would disconnect 3 phase line power and also engage the clutch to start the diesel generator and connect the generator to the 3 phase ac power to the facility using a zero crossing switch to minimize AC line transients. It was incredible to imagine the clutch/flywheel energy would spin the diesel up to full speed in less than a second and have the entire Grumman facility running from the 3 phase diesel generator.
About 100 years ago in 1968 I think it was, I commissioned an emergency generator that had a flywheel running continously to bridge the gab until the diesel took over if needed. That was for the airport in Sidney in the good old days working for GEC Aust.
Elevators want 15 seconds of blackout to ensure a power-on reset (POR) of the controls and to prevent out-of-phase fuse blowing for solid-state drives. Of course, if it could guarantee flawless continuance of voltage, frequency & phase that would be best but brownout Bad spike Bad so if flawless continuance of voltage, frequency & phase isn't guaranteed then 15 seconds of blackout to ensure a power-on reset (POR) of the controls it must be.
Hi Ole. Any down sides of using flywheel for that? As I commented below, I was working on a datacentre design with power generators that had flywheels for exactly that - to bridge the gap until the generators start up. I never understood why this hasn't been used much more often and I wonder if there are any negatives that I am not aware of. What was your experience?
Is it 2068 already? Jeezus! Am I 110 years old!!
@Branko Golubovic in 1968 there were not much power electronics ( and often did not comply with the specification) , but today I think using a battery solution with SiliciumCarbid electronics might be better. ( I am retired now and 81 years old)
@@JustNow42 Thank you!
The big motivation for syncons is for 'fault clearing current', which is their ability to provide up to millions of amps to trip all the breakers, and fuse any bad links or shorts when something goes wrong. The longer term energy storage is insignificant in most applications.
Fault clearing is a major technical challenge for other storage options. Flywheels are unique in this regard. With batteries they are rated in terms of energy density, but a Flywheel has a significant power density.
Power transmission and distribution systems do not experience 'millions of amps' during network faults, nor do they require such high currents for the operation of protective devices. High fault levels (relatively speaking) are intended to maintain system inertia and can allow the use of simpler overcurrent protection devices but networks, (and transmission networks in particular), have used impedance-based or line-differential based protective systems for decades that can detect and disconnect faults at fairly modest current levels very quickly indeed. Overcurrent devices are comparatively slower and are used as backup protection.
The energy density of a flywheel is determined by the square of its rotational velocity. (E= 1/2 mass x velocity squared) so if frictionless magnetic bearings are used I could imagine flywheels rotating at fantastically high speeds to give energy densities comparable to chemical storage.
@@petergibson2318 The problem is that they have to be extremely well balanced and the speed is going to be limited by the elastic strength of whatever it is made of. Yoju need a big safety margine because failure would be absolutely catastrophic.
@@rogerphelps9939 When I was a schoolboy in the seventies I was told that generators were so long because they couldn't spin at 3000rpm if they had a bigger diameter because of the tensile strength of the steel. More power thus needs more length.
There is an application of flywheels to recover energy from electric trains slowing down as they arrive at a station and then providing energy to accelerate them again as they leave a station. Typically such trains use a bank of resisitors to dump electrical energy at the station to slow them down. The resistor banks cannot provide energy for accelerating the train as it leaves the station but a flywheel can! And the discharge times required for accelerating trains (50 to 300 seconds) and the power (1MW) is ideal for flywheels - sitting in between capacitors and batteries. I am connected to a developer which is working on this and am convinced this is a good application which can provide quick returns based on electical power saving. I worked for BP as a young research engineer in the early 1980s when they were developing a flywheel for a bus so flywheels have been of interest since then!
Geared elevators invariably dump electrical energy to a bank of resistors but gearless elevators invariably re-generate except on building emergency power.
I think the overall simplicity of a big spinning mass is great for longevity which overall should reduce the lifetime environmental impacts as well as spreading out the system cost.
I would have thought so, but the cost per kWh of flywheels is quite disappointing. The cycle life is good, but they need maintenance. The only figure of merit that really matters is LCOS.
Thanks for keeping tabs on flywheel subject, I agree it's not going to disrupt everything but it's fascinating development non the less
the revolutionary pun was spectacular
I was disappointed there was no “I’ll get my coat”! 😆
Precision work that is :)
He could have spun it out more. 🔄
When your fly wheel needs maintenance do you call a spin doctor?
It turned me green with envy.
Kudos for a (near) perfect pronunciation of Heerhugowaard! And more for making the effort.
Thanks for last years postings and letting us join your voyage into logic vs vested interests as we get closer to Climate Chaos! I live in hope for 2023!!
Happy New Year sir!
Thanks Dave - always greatly appreciated: yours is the go-to site for news on renewable energy solutions and other aspects of the absolutely huge disruptions that the human race is on the cusp of as the mainstream media don't seem to find these things very important (although a large number of them are funded directly or indirectly by the incumbents, which explains a lot).
I wonder if we could design wind turbines that drive multiple long cylindrical flywheels in series in the tower housing and have the generator at the bottom and then tap the inertia regulated power from there
Brilliant, I love this!
I think if cities used thirsty cement to reduce flooding and sand mining helping ecosystems. Also better insulation will reduce energy demands too if all buildings where updated with more and better insulation. Also lining sides of roads with native plants like flowers bushes succulents mybe a few trees. Why to reduce noise and air and ground pollution thell even reduce flooding and wind damage.
You are the silent one but you know and speak such wisdom.
@@oe4927 thank you 🧑💻.
I've been harping on about this for the last 15 yrs, so good a variety of old greener tested solutions are becoming part of national infrastructures.
15 years? Good going, but they have been a feature of power grids fro a bit longer than that. About 10 years back, the grid scale flywheel manufacturers started looking at systems for micro grids, we had one being developed by Williams on our local stand alone grid. They really extend battery life by reducing ripple current charcge/discharge. Another system that was trialled here (starting about 5 years back) were ultra capacitors, which can respond about 10 times faster.
15ys ago it would have been competitive as well... Today, with even the expensive tesla megapacks beating it hands down, it is not competitive any more.
Compliments of the season Dave. Missed you last week , hope you had a good Christmas and new year. Great work. You come to me on a Monday morning. I wish every day was a Monday.
Happy new year I wasn't expecting a video today but it's appreciated all the same
They sound like the way to go, in conjunction with sodium batteries and wind and solar. They don't use toxic, rare materials and they last a long time. Great! Also, not long ago, pundits were saying that solar and wind would never be affordable, and look what happened with them.
Loved the torque produced by the flywheels in my Triumph motorcycle engines.
you should check out the South Australian grid mostly solar and wind with gas and battery backup. recently installed SinCons to help frequency.
Brilliant idea
Thanks for that welcome update on flywheel use in energy storage and regulation. I wonder how the flywheel solution would compare to super capacitors as both seems solutions to the same issues with battery storage and share a lot of the identical advantages.
Supercaps have much lower self-discharge, but flywheels are much cheaper. Last time I checked supercaps were over 10* the cost/kWh of li-ion.
Happy New Year, Dave!
One of the positive attributes of rotating machinery used for power generation, such as a gas turbine, is the contribution of “spinning reserve” to help stabilize the grid. Going down the road of adding more renewable energy and adapting rather than replacing the existing infrastructure is the best play long term.
Happy New Year's! I loved this one.
I like that there is no spin to your information, I get tired of the news channels and such for spinning the info .
Other than passive solar systems ( which we should be employing everywhere for domestic hot water), this idea would help to smooth out many alternative renewable energy sources at nearly all scales. Thanx for adding this thought to my forebrain!
Storing hot water is a very practical and efficient idea; even in warm climates, we can and do consume considerable amount of hot water as household purpose.
Unfortunately not, these mechanical systems are not suited to store energy. At all, They are suitable well enough to damp out the demand spikes, but this happens at intervals measured in seconds and minutes, not hours.
@@retiefjoubert55 - I was thinking that a flywheel might help to stabilize turbines in gusty conditions, rather than a total shutdown.
@@janami-dharmam - I read somewhere that for a typical family, domestic hot water might be the bulk of the energy consumption.
The problem is sudden spikes on the demand side, not on the supply i.e. gusts.
30 years ago was a company around called magnet motor in starnberg near Munich. i think today they are called Renk Magnet Motors and are mostly in military. Back in time they did Busses with e-drive per wheel and diesel engine to power all. To give the system an enegry storage for some minutes a fly wheel storage was atached. The thing, to be in a bus, had to be mounted cardanic. I was told that one prototype was run against a wall in a coal mine to get aceptance for public transportation. The coal mine because fly wheels can become nasty when stoped in an accident. There is a lot of energy in storage.
I know the guy who built this! Funny story
Excellent content, thank you
As usual great informative video Dave, and your dry humour is icing on the cake. 😂
I remember the flywheel buses, and how they were going to put an end to air pollution. And there were all sorts of machines, from auto engines to sewing machines, that had big heavy spinny things in them.
Flywheel buses would have been extremely dangerous in the event of a collision. Furthermore the large angular momentum would make steering difficult.
Optimal Fuel efficiency requires the least weight so not surprised that flywheels didn’t work. As to Roger Phelps comment about dangerous flywheels in an accident - strange that we don’t say the same thing about gasoline - when it contains far more energy than a flywheel. It is human nature to worry about the “new” risk and discount the existing risk!
Hi Dave, you may have missed that in the UK, a decommissioned gas fired power station was converted to be a flywheel, basically they used the generation set!
Strangely enough, you don't even have to decommission the power station before using it as a flywheel. You can use the valuable reliable power from the power station, and get the other benefits included for free. Only with unreliable intermittent wind and solar do you need to go to ridiculous lengths to re-establish some grid stability.
@@paulcampbell840 plus all the benefits of NOx, CO2, the huge cost of fuel, being beholden to an aggressive psychopath in a foreign country. It’s all upside to burning gas that you forgot.
I recently learned that you can type the name of a city/town/etc. into google translate, then pick the local language to translate to, and then click the speaker icon to hear how to pronounce it correctly -- I can't always say it correctly myself, but at least I have a better idea of what to aim for
Your pronunciation was actually not that bad! Great and informative video.
About 20 years ago, I had the idea to do something similar using a flywheel array attached to a sort of treadle sewing platform for very busy areas like a train station or airport. The millions of people walking daily across it would push the platform downward, getting the flywheels spinning and generating power from it
If you did the sums you would find that it would never be worth the expense
This video makes me think about a flywheel/Sterling Engine combo as a device that could be built on a model basis and scaled up for residential power backup usage. This is especially true when one puts the flywheel into a vacuum container.
Stirling engines can achieve very impressive efficiency, but their power density is terrible: If you want a lot of power, they need to be big.
@@vylbird8014 I am surprised you say this because the European, Japanese, and Chinese Submarine Forces use Sterling Engines as their main propulsion. Now these are the diesel submarines and are not that big.
Do we mean "Stirling" the low temperature heat engine or "Sterling" engine, the internal combustion engine which uses swashplates instead of a crankshaft?
Just power the Stirling engine using the difference in temperature between the ground and the air! 😉.
@@chuckkottke To take either cool or warm air out of the ground follows a specific equation so as not to deplete a small surface area and make sure the difference remains. Usually this is done by some type of heat pump which is exactly what the Stirling Engine is or one of its main uses. It is not so easy to create electricity from this exchange but of course it can provide heated and cooled air.
Got to love your wry understated humor
Great video as always.
Wishing you and your family a blessed & prosperous 2023. Thanks for another excellent video topic. Under a distributed energy scenario, each region should take advantage of all local geo-physical assets - this could be geothermal, ocean, conduit hydro, dam hydro, pumped hydro, turbulent hydro, clean waste-to-energy, energy from poop, wind and / or solar backed by whatever energy storage makes sense (liquid metal, sand, carbon dioxide, flow, gravity, V2G, ocean or whatever they think of next). I don't think there will ever be a single solution to our energy needs. But, of course, energy efficiency at all levels is critical to reduce energy demand - the less we need, the less we need to generate. Energy generation - and the type of tech available to generate it - also depends on what it's needed for... commercial, industrial, residential or a combination of each.
Thanks. Excellent overview.
Dude, your graphic effects are giving me life!
Na energy storage and flywheel storage hybrids seem like the best option, smoothing out the charge/discharge times and keeping the cheeper Na batteries healthy for a longer time, kind of like a battery with a super-capacitor but on grid scale size.
That could be a great combination.
Ultra capacitors are being used at similar scale to flywheels. And, yes, it's all about reducing battery cycles.
These projects are important, and so is shining a spotlight on them (as you continue to do in an entertaining and comprehensive way, good job once again!). Lithium cost evaluations are subject to change. Really, Lithium is valuable because it is LIGHT weight. Do we need light weight for stationary objects? (Probably best NOT to use all our limited supply of lithium in applications where weight doesn't matter. Save it for moving objects, yes? That's something "cost tables" overlook.)
I'm pretty sure lithium is one of the more abundant elements. The matter is that of mining and disposing of it once it's in a battery. It's overall a very destructive and harming chemistry. Either way, the sentiment is true, use sparingly and in the right applications.
@@nathanmiddleton1478 That's a good point. Yes, lithium is the 3rd element on the periodic table. So the question is: What you are willing to rip apart and destroy to get to it, especially the few places where this common element has become concentrated. Unfortunately, not many corporate types are concerned about the wake of destruction they leave behind. Best to just end-around them and replace lithium with more environmentally friendly alternatives.
the weight of the Li metal in the battery is rather small. A battery that weighs 1 kg may have 20-30 gm of Li metal. The matter is related to the chemistry.
@@onebylandtwoifbysearunifby5475 Sea water (waste brines) can be a good source and if you are getting other metals from the sea water (say Mg) then isolation of Li can be cost effective, I guess.
@@janami-dharmam Sea water is an interesting idea. I am not familiar with that lithium extraction process. Hopefully it is more efficient than duterium needed for nuclear fusion (which is actually extremely limiting, and a reason nuclear fusion is questionable as an energy process at this point.) That would be great though, if lithium could be easily and cheaply extracted from sea water. Thanks for the info.
I work in the norwegian offshore oil industry and we have started using flywheels (for some reason called Powerblades) on drilling equipment to reduce fuel use.
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Happy new year keep it going keep me thinking ish every time 😜
I think storing energy to give it back over night might be an important application, so if it lasts from peak renewable (probably at noon) to maybe eight in the morning, that’s 20h. When you need longer storage, you probably need a different solution. We need a comparison video with compressed air, or those “lift some weight to a higher place”-thingies. Here is my crazy idea: liftable houses! - Maybe when building new houses they could have two layers of foundation with a bladder of water in between, that pumps / expands and contracts with the weight of the house on top: no need to build the weights separately (as concrete produces CO2). And when the nearby river floods, you just pump up your house out of harms way (and even store a little bit of extra water; assuming you could draw the extra water from the same river). Houses would kind of have an extra level of basement full of water. Maybe it could even double as a heat sink for air conditioning, or as a cistern for the dry weeks of the year. - just add some water storage to every building. - Oh, wait: that’s a kind of water tower…
Vacuums and magnetic bearings will lower the losses and increase the costs.
At least quadruple the cost of the house. Probably 20x or more. The reason houses in flood zones are built on stilts is it is far cheaper to get above the water than to deal with it. Lift the house when you build it.
I recall reading an article about houses that could be built as a sort of houseboat sitting on dry land in flood-prone areas. There were stabilizing columns that kept the house from moving laterally and floating away, if the flood did occur.
The only less suitable way to store energy than a flywheel, would be compresses air.
Tanks for the update. There is, however, a misinformation that seems to be everlasting. You mention the ingredients of Li-Ion batteries to be rare earths and metals. This might be true for metals such as Co in Li-ion systems, but it is certainly not true for rare earths. These chemical elements form a specific group of 17 metals, some of which are indeed rare and hard to come by. But none of these are found in Li battery systems. They are components of powerful magnets for electricity generation or in EVs, a fact which has been brought up to denounce electric road transport and wind energy generation altogether. If stated wrongly - and you are by far not the only one - that rare earth elements are used in batteries, your statement might be used to discredit regenerative energy systems. Which obviously is contrary to your intensions. It could be worth devoting a youtube presentation to the role of rare earth elements in the transition of energy generation and electric transport.
From the little I've noticed there seems to be use of "rare earth minerals" or "rare earth metals" for those elements that are relatively rare even if they aren't Rare Earth elements, and then occasionally of course some commentators refer to the former as "rare earth elements" even though they aren't. That'll never be fixed.
A great item. a few additional points to consider: (1) the use of electricity generating flywheels predates battery energy storage by decades, they were called synchronous compensators and they provided a number of electrical services in addition to inertia; (2) these new electrical flywheels are not "completely safe", there are risks in containing such large quantities of energy e.g. if the bearing oil system failed then (in the Moneypoint example) up to 600MW seconds of energy could be dumped into the bearings and they would promptly melt, no longer stabilised the multi ton flywheel may have enough remaining energy to jump off its bearings and exit the building at speed
So site the flywheels underground, perhaps the use of magnetic bearings reduces the risk of beating failure..
Thank you for explaining this
I do think flywheels will scale well. And that was a revolutionary pun! You brought both joy and pain to many with that one.
We've been here before. In the early 1970's the Rabinhorst Super flywheel was going to do everything you have noted, along with being placed in cars to allow for smaller engines while still allowing for quick acceleration on hills etc. I wonder what happened then? It does make sense to add flywheels to say, solar systems or windmills to level out battery supply voltage. It could of course run on the production side as well when voltages start lagging as batteries deplete.
Two options of what happend: A. the secret society against flywheels managed to kill every successful flywheel company. B. It is not feasible for reasons of physics and economics and you were not interessted in details (mass, friction, production costs).
Putting flywheels on moving vehicles presents a problem that you don't have with stationary ones: they resist having their axis of rotation altered. Imagine going over a bump on the left side (only) of a car and having the flywheel resist titling of the car so much to the point that it could lift the right side of the car off the ground. Also the direction of rotation affects their behavior, so you probably need two counter-rotating flywheels cancel out that asymmetry. You could mount the flywheels in a gimbal, allowing its axis to move independently of the car's body, but that adds complexity, takes up additional space, and adds "dead weight" that is not used for storing energy. With all that said, flywheels were actively researched for this use when high energy density batteries were still an uncertain thing of the future.
@UCwGVsuExr1GO-USL8DYXsWQ Flywheels impact on the driving behavior of cars and busses. They were used in busses because idle losses didn't matter so much in stop-and-go scenarios and motor efficiency was bad. Infrastructure gets more expensive from year to year. Carbon Flywheels are expensive. Windmills have technologies integrated to emulate the effect of flywheels. It makes more sense to build another windmill instead of a flywheel. Big companies and states like centralized Infrastructure which is why there are couple examples of Flywheels being installed. We need to store more heat. More flexibility of consumers is the best approach. Stabilize locally. Investing in (more) robustness of the whole grid is the approach with the highest costs.
@@larslrs7234 The efficiency of a wind turbine as a Flywheel would be very low due to friction, air resistance mostly.
@@yeroca That resistance to rotation in other planes is why they have flywheels on the Hubble Telescope, they help to keep it stable so it can produce clear images. I think the ISS has one as well.
So Wise , Thank You. I hope they work
MIT,s fusion experiment has been running a 218 ton 2 piece flywheel over 30 year, and the 118 ton version for years earlier. The 118 ton flywheel is a retired New York City Transit Authority cross compound steam turbine generator. 50cycle They have the generator from the low pressure half @180 MW. They don't have a 300,000 HP steam turbine so they spin it up to speed with a 2.000HP electric motor and then engage the field and the 118 ton field acting as a flywheel dose the rest. They get 180 MW for 5 or 10 seconds, then they start all over again. After several years the wanted to increase the duration, so they add a 100ton fly wheel between the motor and the generator.
Happy New Year and thanks for another fine video. As you correctly point out, there are several pieces to the sustainable power generation/grid stabilization puzzle. One might ask how much room for improvement in efficiency is there and what are the practical implications? At 92% efficiency obviously, theoretically, there is about 8% left to improve upon. If it took a day to spin down a flywheel running at 92% efficiency, how long would it take to spin down at 99% efficiency? The increase can't go linearly with efficiency boost since at 100% it never stops. At some level one probably has to feed energy into the system to combat friction so even 99% may be a pipe dream.
I am not sure whether this is documented, but it feels like the 92% efficiency is at peak performance and not after one day... 92% efficiency is what tesla claims for their megapacks btw. And they can sit for days like that. And those "only" cost near to 500usd per kWh, whereas is projected to cost 3000usd/kWh in future... By which time grid level battery storage will cost 100usd/kWh (LiFePO4 raw cells already cost less than that). So cute idea, but this one will not... fly?
Keep the jokes coming!
Not the first video I've seen on the subject, but probably the best explained.
One of the greatest sci-fi channels.
A few years ago I had an idea for a 100' diameter rotating ring rotating and floating in a level trough using maglev and vacuum. It seemed to me that so long as it was strong enough to remain a solid ring, you could spin it up to arbitrary speeds. I wonder, however, if there would be issues relating to precession?
Work out the 'strong enough' part though - that's your problem. The speeds you need to be practical only a few materials can endure.
Flywheels fascinate me. I've always felt there is some hidden potential yet to be discovered that will revolutionize their use. Hard to defy physics though. Great content per usual. 👍
"Inconvenient random combustion." Too funny. Good episode!
I've always been a fan of flywheel energy storage.
Humor ar ar! Happy new year! And thank you for your weekly updates.
Really enjoy ur programs 🤓
Lithium battery factories and the suppliers of raw materials can't keep up with the demand for energy storage. Flywheel system factories use a much different set of raw materials. New flywheel factories are unlikely to suffer supply constraints. The demand is huge. Assuming they can get costs down into the same neighborhood as battery based systems, they can profitably be run at full capacity for the foreseeable future. There are market niches where flywheels can demand a premium price. Examples include very hot locations, and applications where there will be many very brief cycles.
I like the new title cards and graphics. Makes things look tidy and professional like it's on the same shelf as PBS
I just bought a flywheel (kinetic) woodsplitter. Speed and power were my main goals but it also turns out that I am using about 1/3 as much gas as my old hydraulic one. It saves energy because it gets a charge between splits while I am picking up the next piece to split. It is brilliant and I love it but it is a very specific application. I imagine that in the right niche this could also help the grid as well by smoothing out solar spikes from clouds perhaps..
I love the spin you put on that revolution thing... 😆
Your pronunciation was very good! Looking forward towards all your videos this year, happy new year everyone
Indeed, I’m Dutch and surprised by the pronunciation. In steps: Here who go ward 😊
Excellent, thank you.
On a small, residential scale, I think combining wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro generators (where available) with flywheel storage makes for a completely reliable system. Even with the loss through friction over time, their ability to spin up quickly and maintain maximum rotation with little input while you are generating electricity from your various sources means that even if they run out of stored energy while you’re sleeping, a)you won’t need the electricity then anyway; and b) they will easily power back up again the next day from the excess energy you’re producing throughout the day. Very cool.
I do love your slightly apologetic 'jokes'. They never fail to make me smile or even, on occasion titter.
A very valuable video on Flywheel Energy Systems. Loved it.
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Flywheels. An excellent idea.
I love your videos. You do a good job of explaining things in such a way that I can understand. I keep hoping that one day I'll see a video explaining how I can use these technologies on a small scale for my home.
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I treasure your installments.
Larry Niven, sci fi writer, wrote about this decades ago, in one of his "Stainless Steel Rat" books. The "motorbikes" the cops were chasing him on, had a spinning flywheel, plugged in overnight and spun up to tremendous speeds. Great for a chase. Jim and his new bride eluded them, tho I don't remember how.
Nice work brah 💯👍🌞
I love flywheels and I loved this video. Thanks. 😍🙌
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