Flywheel mechanical battery with 32 kWh of storage in Australia
Flywheel mechanical battery with 32 kWh of storage in Australia
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.
Hey that's sort of neat. I didn't know flywheels were really being deployed anywhere.
I bet the fail state would be a proper disaster though. Centrifuge accidents are no laughing matter!
Quite correct. Even if the outer casing is enough to contain the rotor, that is still 32 kilowatt hours of kinetic energy that goes somewhere. They're saying they saved money by putting it above ground, that means if potentially the casing fails you have little shards of metal going out with great energy in every direction.
Yea I would have hoped that it’s basically regulated that any sufficiently large fly wheel needs to be underground.
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