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Nice advertizing at the ESS website. A little too much on the "please send money" side and too little on the "technology" explanation.
I'm not saying flywheels don't work. I am saying I have yet to see a flywheel technology that will continue to run a generator for any length of time. Once the flywheel "sees" any friction is starts to slow down. Using magnets or ceramics may extend the running time but the flywheel won't be able to maintain it's rotation speed to drive the "generator" and eventually it will slow down and stop. If you have to keep putting energy back into the system to keep it spinning then you will need to generate that extra power. Most times that negates the needed amount being provided to "load". Also how do you maintain the vacuum in that chamber?
Until it is tested and verified by a third party using known scientific measurement standards and in a "real life" condition it is still only a laboratory experiment maybe a couple levels above "vaporwear".
I wish you luck with your research. As you say even some of the great scientists were doubted. Maybe someone will find a breakthrough in that technology.Comment
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walltr8der
I totally understand what you are saying and I'm not going to fence with you..As far as I could see, I probably agree with what you say regarding Solar Roadways.. I have data to support our claims. We are not just smoke and mirrors.. We know what we have! Before you cast us under the bus, please do a little research...it is easy to criticize....... ThxComment
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Of course I knew I'd see guys on this thread that claim to have done it already. These are the same people that claim to have come up with lithium batteries that have comparable energy densities to gasoline. Yes I know very well it's theoretically possible and maybe even working in a laboratory somewhere. The problem is why aren't they at all the solar installation companies in the the industrial sectors of every city yet? Answer is they aren't tried and tested or economically viable yet. The point of this thread is to get people talking about why they aren't there yet. What are the snags? What's holding progress back? One thing I do know for a fact is it's not low lead acid battery prices - while PV costs and other battery costs have been coming down lead acid is on the way up. If trends continue soon lead acid will no longer be the most cost effective way. A BIG GAP in the market is busy opening up!Comment
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I'd be very guarded about things like this until I saw a working system and had a look at independent verification of claims. Back in the day when living in NYS, I saw some of the stuff NYSERDA funded. I recall being less than impressed with a lot of it. Maybe things have changed.Comment
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Utility scale to allow time shifting of baseload capacity is where the biggest demand and bucks are at - RE is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
One big difference between the two groups (RE vs utility or say GE) is that GE, Siemens, PG&E, SCE and many others is that they would have engineers all over the thing.
The Bloom Box (Boom Box) is another case in point - it was never designed or meant to do anything except collect federal government dollars for the investors.[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Comment
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No it is not when we are talking about transmission using 1 MV lines up to 400 miles. Huge monetary gains made doing transmission that way carrying some 6 to 10 Gw for enternity, none to be gained in generation for such a small amount of energy.
The problem with Flywheels is it is extremely inefficient. It takes large amounts of power to spool up to operating RPM, plus continious lesser amounts keeping the RPM up until you finally decide to use the power.MSEE, PEComment
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Exactly. And if a flywheel can allow a utility to keep two extra peakers shut down during the summer, it might well be worth it for them. Note that utilities need to keep peakers on hot standby in case of unexpected loads; they do not need long term power from them, but rather instant power (i.e. frequency stabilization) if they unexpectedly lose a generation source. In such cases the utilities are effectively using the peakers _as_ flywheels since even a straight turbine peaker has some lag time.
Hmm. Again, the same is true of peakers in hot standby. And since, unlike a peaker, the flywheel can run on magnetic bearings in a vacuum, that standby power can be very low indeed - much lower than the current devices used for frequency stabilization.The problem with Flywheels is it is extremely inefficient. It takes large amounts of power to spool up to operating RPM, plus continious lesser amounts keeping the RPM up until you finally decide to use the power.Comment
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That flywheel technology has not progressed as fast as the simpler big power plant technology, nor has the function it provides (load leveling/utility scale storage/frequency stabilization) been needed as much in the past.
Keep in mind that 60 years ago there were ZERO nuclear power plants around vs lots of oil fired power plants. That would be a poor fact to cite to try to claim that therefore nuclear power had no future.Comment
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And the technology of super conducting wires has been around since the 60's but they still have not come up with a working solution due to the extreme cold temperatures needed to make the wire work.
Again. I think flywheels have some potential but you are trying to describe Utility size units. No one has come close to even a 500kW size one let along the Megawatt range needed to keep the Utility power smooth and flywheels have been around a lot longer than Nuclear power plants.Comment
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