That's dope. Nothing quite like that. It's like how bicycles are ~99% efficient; just one of those weird, archaic things you would never expect to work as well as it does.
Only thing I’d say is that it’s probably not that scalable for grid storage. Like, they would take a lot more resources per watt to make en masse than, say, a pumped-hydro reservoir. All you need is one pump and one turbine, basically.
That’s why batteries and things like that haven’t really become a part of grid storage. We just need to store a LOT of energy. Lithium-ion batteries are efficient, sure, but they just take so many resources and so much labour to make per watt of storage, that they just can’t compete with a big lake hahaha
So cool. My friend's dad has like an antique car that has one of these in it to save momentum energy when you're coasting/decelerating. Just such a wild concept haha
They also fail catastrophically if they snap. The biggest thing holding back flywheel storage is the danger of spinning something really really big, really really fast. Like if a flywheel that powers a building fails, and it can due to material weakness, it will take out the entire building. On a household scale, you don't want shrapnel flying around at more than 10000 RPM. For safety they're buried underground, and have other safety features to stop safely but that increases cost. I think they're mostly used for grid regulation.
I think they're mainly for short term regulatory storage, since they can be charged and discharged quickly. I don't think anyone wants to store an entire city's power in flywheels.
Low speed high stack flywheels are in the 99% range.
That's dope. Nothing quite like that. It's like how bicycles are ~99% efficient; just one of those weird, archaic things you would never expect to work as well as it does.
Only thing I’d say is that it’s probably not that scalable for grid storage. Like, they would take a lot more resources per watt to make en masse than, say, a pumped-hydro reservoir. All you need is one pump and one turbine, basically.
That’s why batteries and things like that haven’t really become a part of grid storage. We just need to store a LOT of energy. Lithium-ion batteries are efficient, sure, but they just take so many resources and so much labour to make per watt of storage, that they just can’t compete with a big lake hahaha
Wheels are already the common tech for overflow storage (which isn't the same as general storage, but proves the concept)
So cool. My friend's dad has like an antique car that has one of these in it to save momentum energy when you're coasting/decelerating. Just such a wild concept haha
They also fail catastrophically if they snap. The biggest thing holding back flywheel storage is the danger of spinning something really really big, really really fast. Like if a flywheel that powers a building fails, and it can due to material weakness, it will take out the entire building. On a household scale, you don't want shrapnel flying around at more than 10000 RPM. For safety they're buried underground, and have other safety features to stop safely but that increases cost. I think they're mostly used for grid regulation.
Flywheels are for grid level storage, which is the primary problem holding back renewable sustainables.
Still a lot less effective than just building a pellet reactor.
I think they're mainly for short term regulatory storage, since they can be charged and discharged quickly. I don't think anyone wants to store an entire city's power in flywheels.