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Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts
- catalogia 6y agoFraming a flywheel as a "simulation of a turbine" is really bizarre, unless there's something quite weird about this particular flywheel that the article fails to make clear.
- Ballas 6y agoIt is to mimic the spinning turbine generators, which themselves act as flywheels, but in this case without the turbine part. The rotational inertia gives stability in that the frequency cannot suddenly change. I thought that was quite clear from the article?
- catalogia 6y agoThe article isn't unclear, it's just weird. Smoothing out the input power is doubtlessly the most common purpose of a flywheel, second to power storage, and both of those is what this flywheel is for too. Describing a flywheel in terms of a turbine due to turbines acting as flywheels is the part that's weird.
- Ballas 6y agoI guess it is referred to in that way to give the reader context as to why it is needed now.
- happytoexplain 6y agoAs somebody without the domain knowledge, I thought the article did a great job of making it clear what the flywheel is doing (though of course it could be misleading in some way and I wouldn't know). I'm honestly a little confused as to the nature of your objection about which object is described in the context of the other.
- catalogia 6y agoI'm not 'objecting' to anything and I don't think it's misleading. I just think it's weird to describe a simple machine in terms of a more complex machine by pointing out that in one aspect the more complex machine is doing what the simpler machine does. It's like describing a light-switch in terms of relays. Not wrong, not even misleading, but normally you'd expect the comparison to be made the other way around; describing relays in terms of light-switches or the rotational inertia of turbines in terms of flywheels.
- Johnythree 6y agoIt behaves exactly as an un-powered (but spinning) generator. In the industry these are known as a "Synchronous Condenser" or Syncom. They have been in use for a long time. https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2019/04/06/long-read-behind-the-limited-return-of-the-syncon/ https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2019/04/06/long-read-b... One problem with the switch to renewable energy is that the mechanical momentum in steam turbines is lost. This leaves the grid vulnerable to rapid changes in loading.
- BTinfinity 6y agoWasn't aware blackouts were a significant problem in the UK. Great device for moving away from fossil fuels though
- rcxdude 6y agoThey aren't particularly, but there was a fairly large one last year, and grid stability is become harder as more and more of its energy comes from renewables (as the article mentions, the grid is favoring fossil fuel power sometimes in order to keep things stable).
- DrBazza 6y agoThis might interest you: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/12/10/watch-a-power-station-demolition-2/ https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/12/10/watch-a-power-st... "The power plant was notable for being one of the few that could restart generating electricity without an external power to restart its generators in case of a wide-scale power-outage. This was partly due to cold-war concerns that an attack could take out London power supplies. To be able to restart the plant, it made use of versions of jet engines based on those used on Concorde to jump start the main generators — and they were used to keep the lights on following the October 1987 storms."
- geocrasher 6y agoSame article, no registration required. This site touts "Powered by The Guardian" and does not appear to be a scraper: http://www.execreview.com/2020/07/giant-flywheel-project-in-scotland-could-prevent-uk-blackouts/ http://www.execreview.com/2020/07/giant-flywheel-project-in-...
- netsharc 6y agoLooks like a content-stealing site thinking adding a PNG that credits the original source is enough to keep them away from trouble... The Guardian's registration nag keeps getting worse and worse, but there is still a button labelled "Not now" to bypass it.
- empyrical 6y agoIt's from the Guardian Open Platform[1], which has a clause in the TOS[2] requiring that that the "Powered By The Guardian" logo be displayed where you display Guardian content > Include a "Powered by The Guardian" logo (or such other Guardian logo as we may require from time to time) on the same webpage as any republished OP Content, or any tool or function that is based on OP Content. Such logo must be a reproduction of the "Powered By" file found at http://www.theguardian.com/open-platform/logos http://www.theguardian.com/open-platform/logos, and comply with any special terms set out by us. The "Powered by The Guardian" logo must not be used in conjunction with any content other than the OP Content. [1] https://open-platform.theguardian.com/ https://open-platform.theguardian.com/ [2] https://www.theguardian.com/open-platform/terms-and-conditions https://www.theguardian.com/open-platform/terms-and-conditio...
- _whiteCaps_ 6y ago> This is the first time a project of this kind will be used anywhere in the world and ESO believes it could be a “huge step forward” in running a zero-carbon electricity grid. I'm trying to find some stats on this, because flywheel UPS aren't a new idea: https://www.finning.com/en_IE/products/new/power-systems/electric-power-generation/ups-flywheel/18499752.html https://www.finning.com/en_IE/products/new/power-systems/ele... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_storage_power_system#Power_grid_frequency_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_storage_power_system#...
- Ballas 6y agoWhat is different in this case is it is not really an energy storage system (at least that is not the main intended purpose), but only to provide stability to the grid frequency. A huge flywheel in a vacuum to provide a reference to millions of distributed PLLs. I don't think the idea is to always have it spin at a fixed rate with minimal losses. In the case where a flywheel is used as a UPS, the rate at which it is spinning will vary in accordance with the stored energy.
- tankenmate 6y agoYou can get constant spin rate but variable energy storage / release by adjusting the moment of inertia, e.g. if you have movable weights within the rotor you can move these inboard or outboard, moving it inboard uses energy while increasing the spin rate, and moving it outboard releases energy while slowing the rate. Using this in combination with "conventional" direct axle energy input / release means you can store or release energy from the system as a whole while also keeping a constant rate (within the bounds of the total energy storage capacity of the system).
- neltnerb 6y agoIs this used in practice? It sounds like a rather substantial engineering challenging considering how much energy the wheel is storing. I remember MIT had one of these for sparking the old tokomak, they had to plan for it to fall off, destroy several buildings without killing anyone, and then land in the river... and that was a solid wheel that did nothing but spin. But isn't the point that it provides inertia towards stabilizing the frequency? I don't think it matters whether you can vary the energy stored if it's just acting as a, well, wheel... if the goal is to give you a bit more time to bring more generation online or take it offline then it seems like a simple system would be fine. It's not storing power, so it can only ever slow the drift to give more flexibility.
- geogra4 6y agowell, assuming scotland doesn't leave...
- DrBazza 6y agoThis is a consequence of the UK having little capacity for pumped-storage, i.e. hydro-electric. We don't really have the height, and we have "areas of outstanding natural beauty" that cannot be built in easily, so we need alternatives to store the energy. The rest of the world just builds a dam, creates a new lake, and moves on.
- btbuildem 6y agoI would be grateful for having such strong legislation that protects the remaining swathes of nature.
- jlmorton 6y agoThat's a good point. But I'm not sure it's quite as simple as you make it sound to construct a dam with 2.5 million cubic meters of concrete, divert all of the water for a major drainage basin into the newly-created reservoir, and flood 500 square kilometers of land to a depth of 100 meters, and then just move on.
- corobo 6y agoGenerally you don’t do it by yourself
- happytoexplain 6y ago>The rest of the world just builds a dam, creates a new lake, and moves on. Your wording implies this is better than the flywheel solution - can you elaborate for a layman?
- DrBazza 6y agoI'm just cynically generalising - the rest of world compared to the UK has typically less stringent planning requirements, and more mountainous terrain. To store energy in other countries (except perhaps Holland..!) you build a hydro dam, and pump water into those dammed lakes using excess electricity to store it up for later release. We have mountains (Wales, Lake District, Scotland), but the likelihood of creating lakes for hydro use is close to zero. And you would need many, many, flywheels to substitute for one lake.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoDoes anyone have any real information about this project? The Guardian article is essentially the same as the press releases on both GE's and Statkraft's web sites and says nothing about the scale of the project.
- yummypaint 6y agoThey say it's a 25M pound budget, and show a model about 2x the height of a person, so it looks like it may just be that single unit. The moment of inertia looks comparable to that of a large steam turbine.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoThose things have interesting failure modes. Will they have to be buried underground, or is this somehow a solved problem?
- tpmx 6y agoWhat happens if the grid frequency disagrees too much with the rotation frequency of the flywheel, too quickly? The flywheel disintegrates and turns into a massive spherical weapon of mass distruction? Like this, but 20x worse? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdcE3VyKv5U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdcE3VyKv5U
- msandford 6y agoThe spinning flywheel doesn't just spin on its own. It gets spun up and kept spinning by an electric motor/generator I have to imagine. So you're limited as to how much power can go in or out by the size of that motor/generator. If it's a 100kw peak electrical machine then it can provide at most 100kw of instantaneous power to the grid while at the same time slowing down by however much is required to deliver that power. If I understand correctly the idea is a lot like capacitors for DC voltage. The DC voltage has to go down in order for the capacitor to supply current, but the capacitor ensures that the voltage can't go down as quickly as it would otherwise.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoThats not the theoretical limit though. This is a physical device with moving parts. What if the bearing fails? What if the weight disintegrates due to a manufacturing fault? Suddenly all that stored energy wants to go somewhere.
- opwieurposiu 6y agoThe flywheel will have breakers to prevent excessive inflow or outflow of power. In a conventional plant, the spinning machinery is monitored by vibration sensors. If the vibration exceeds some threshold, a "Turbine Trip" occurs and the offending generator is disconnected from the grid. It then slowly spins down, dissipating energy via it's own friction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine_trip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine_trip
- sixhobbits 6y agoI don't really know a lot about energy. Is this similar to something like Energy Vault[0] or is stabilizing the frequency different to storing power for later use. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn5AM75AGvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn5AM75AGvw
- LordHeini 6y agoThis energy vault device will not work for a couple of reasons. Like the astonishingly low energy density of such a structure or the difficulty in running and maintaining the cranes to pull the weights. It is basically a mechanical version of pumped hydroelectric energy storage; just clunky and inefficient. Flywheels store orders of magnitude more power per ton and have very low reaction times (in the order of milliseconds). This makes them great for frequency control which just means really short term energy storage. The power grids frequency is directly co-related with the power throughput. If there is too much demand the frequency will drop. A flywheel can quite easily buffer very short term demands and flatten the somewhat erratic output of wind turbines or solar.
- verytrivial 6y agohttps://www.goodnewsfinland.com/teraloop-secures-eur-2-4-million-grant/ https://www.goodnewsfinland.com/teraloop-secures-eur-2-4-mil... - There's a Finnish company called Teraloop who've been chipping away at a more Sci-Fi version involving maglev and evacuated loops. Life gets difficult for this model because the heat induced due to current 'turbulence' and maybe skin effect gets 'stuck' inside the chamber. Fun engineering problems.
- Someone 6y agoEven more Sci-Fi (I think; I couldn’t find definitive figures as to the size Teraloop aims for): https://www.ecn.nl/news/item/floating-train-at-2000-kmh-set-to-store-10-of-dutch-electricity/ https://www.ecn.nl/news/item/floating-train-at-2000-kmh-set-.... I don’t know whether that idea died on the drawing table since 2015, but I guess it could have.
- xhkkffbf 6y agoWhy do we care about keeping frequency stable when more and more products simply put the power through a rectifier to turn it to DC? The lamps all have LED "bulbs". The computers have power bricks. Do we really care if the compressors in the air conditioners and the refrigerators turn at a slightly different rate? Okay, maybe a rapid shift in frequency could be damaging, but a slight drift sounds okay mechanically. Or am I wrong?
- tankenmate 6y agoA change in frequency generally changes the efficiency of voltage regulators / voltage converters; over a very large network this can exhibit behaviour that looks a lot like negative resistance, this can induce runaway voltage conditions.
- URSpider94 6y agoIn the electrical grid, frequency is proportional to voltage. When the frequency drops, it means that the supplied voltage is also falling. Likewise, if you go over-frequency, then the voltage will rise. Traditionally, the inertia of thousands of tons of spinning generator turbines across the system provided this inertia, but with more and more nonlinear sources (and also nonlinear loads), that balance is disappearing.
- jillesvangurp 6y agoBatteries are also becoming popular for the same reason. The more batteries you have the easier it is to deal with fluctuations in supply and demand as you can switch them on and off in milliseconds and they can serve to both supply GW to the grid or absorb it from the grid. Flywheels are useful because they store a lot of energy and don't require a lot of energy to keep them spinning (i.e. topped up with energy). Simply connecting them to a generator can be done (relatively) quickly and allows them to supply power for a relatively long period of time. It's basically a mechanical battery. Both have the advantage that they are cheaper to operate than a typical peaker plant, which is increasingly the role of remaining coal plants that are otherwise too expensive by orders of magnitudes to operate continuously. Switching those on is a last resort for energy companies. The more battery they have, the less need they have for those. And the less they get utilized, the more expensive they are to keep around. Gas plants are better but they take a long time to turn off and on again and doing that is also not cheap. Prices have actually turned negative a couple of times in e.g. the UK in cases where the power companies were literally paying people to use their excess power just so they could avoid having to turn off plants that are expensive to turn back on. Basically, grid storage capacity allows electricity companies to smooth out peaks in demand and supply and respond extremely rapidly by either soaking up or supplying many GW.
- jeffbee 6y agoDoes it make sense for a flywheel to have a horizontal axis of rotation, as shown in the concept image? Seems like that would be the hard way, from the standpoint of engineering.
- twic 6y agoMaybe they could just spin the Falkirk Wheel round really fast.
- Johnythree 6y agoIt's axis must be parallel with the Earth's axis, otherwise the earth's rotation would generate enormous gyroscopic forces.
- jeffbee 6y agoInteresting. Why does every other flywheel on the market have a vertical axis (that is, normal to the surface of the Earth, regardless of the place it is installed)? I was thinking more about the fatigue of the shaft.
- jeffbee 6y agoThis discussion of a test flywheel installation in California seems a lot more interesting than this article. https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/2019publications/CEC-500-2019-012/CEC-500-2019-012.pdf https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/2019publications/CEC-500-2019-012/...
- ansible 6y agoThanks for the link. It is heartening to see utility-scale storage for a reasonable cost being developed. 20 years ago, there were a couple companies working on flywheel energy storage for mobile applications. They were using carbon-fiber flywheels, which could spin up to 100K RPM, but were expensive to manufacture. I would have predicted (back then) that carbon-fiber would have won out eventually for infrastructure applications as well, but I guess they were not able to get the costs down sufficiently.
- yboris 6y agoFeels like friction would eat away a lot of electricity, no?
- lolc 6y agoFlywheels (no matter their size) can be operated in near vacuum with magnetic bearings[0]. Friction can be really low. A funny aside is that they have to be aligned with earth's rotation so they don't resist it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_bearing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_bearing
- yboris 6y agoThank you for the response. My thought is that the weight of the flywheel matters. To be able to absorb / release a tremendous amount of power, I imagine this flywheel would need to be very heavy. If so, wouldn't it non-linearly differ in efficiency from the near vacuum & magnetic bearing designs we've built before? Perhaps the proposal is to build a large array of smaller flywheels that don't have to deal with the problem I imagine? I'm not familiar with any part of engineering here -- just a curious soul -- sincerely asking!
- lolc 6y agoNot that I know much about flywheel engineering. But machines tend to become more efficient the bigger you build them. With flywheels, I don't see the bearings as difficult. I mean it's sure a challenge to keep a few tons afloat, but nothing unsolved. I'd assume (but don't know) that you can scale magnetic bearings a few orders of magnitude with their properties staying the same. On the other hand, the faster you spin flywheels, the more energy they store. And here comes the limitation: The material they're made of has to sustain all tearing force. So at some point you'll add mass instead of spinning faster.
- hindsightbias 6y agoHaven't these been around forever? I went on a tour of a university tokomak in the 80's and they had some giant flywheel for short-burst electrical energy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cordite 6y agoHow big and how fast must a flywheel be to perturb Earth's rotation, in a similar method of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_moment_gyroscope
- ricardobeat 6y agoThe rotational energy of the planet is absolutely massive. I don't remember the numbers but you'd need millions of atomic bombs fired at once just to make a dent - and it would still not affect the orbit of this now radioactive fireball at all.
- ggm 6y agoThis sounds like a fancy syncon. They have been a thing in power network engineering for a long time. I can believe it has "new features" but the underlying mechanics of a Syncon are not new. This may just be something good, being over sold by a company with an interest in boosting.
- sova 6y agoThis looks like the electrical equivalent of a weir
- bArray 6y ago> will not generate electricity or produce carbon emissions There is still a tonne of carbon used in creation...
- epx 6y agoCertainly less than 1/100 second of daily global emissions?