Key Energy has installed a three-phase flywheel energy storage system at a residence east of Perth, Western Australia. The 8 kW/32 kWh system was installed over two days in an above-ground enclosure, dramatically cutting the time needed to install the flywheel system.
Sadly, it says almost nothing about how these actually work, and the video shows them taking the unit off the truck and onto a concrete pad … that’s it.
eh, flywheel is not that complicated. It’s just a heavy spinning thing mounted on fixed axle, said axle is connected to motor/generator combo. Electricity in, motor spins that thing faster. Generator tap into that spin, it slows down and electricity flows out.
the problems would be on the ‘how big this heavy spinning thing need to be’, ‘how to minimize friction’, and most importantly ‘how to actually build this thing and make sure it won’t kill anyone’. because heavy spinning thing that suddenly got loose from its axle is a teeny-tiny-bit very lethal
Hmm, this doesn’t seem like it would store energy for long though right? Once the energy starts flowing in, the wheel magnifies that force I assume, but needs almost constant input right? It’s just meant to deal w hiccups in power outages?
store, not magnify… although it can deal with ‘ripples’ and ‘hiccups’ in power delivery…
its capacity isn’t that big, the title said so “32 kWh”. for average house, it might only last for 6-ish hours of sustained use. that should be sufficient
with the exception of natural disaster, your power company should have less than 6 hours of power outage per year.