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Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

theguardian.com

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Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#21

Post by happytoexplain »

catalogia wrote: post #11
Ballas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 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?

The 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.

As 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.

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#22

Post by corobo »

jlmorton wrote: post #17
DrBazza wrote: post #8

This 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.

That'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.

Generally you don’t do it by yourself

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#24

Post by catalogia »

happytoexplain wrote: post #21
catalogia wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 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.

As 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.

I'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.

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#25

Post by netsharc »

geocrasher wrote: post #3

Same 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-...

Looks 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.

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#26

Post by verytrivial »

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.

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#27

Post by DrBazza »

happytoexplain wrote: post #19
DrBazza wrote: post #8

This 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.

>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?

I'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.

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#28

Post by yummypaint »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #16

Does 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.

They 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.

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#29

Post by baybal2 »

DrBazza wrote: post #8

This 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.

> We don't really have the height,

UK is an island, and you have highlands. Why not make some salt water lakes there?

Re: Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

#30

Post by rbanffy »

frobozz wrote: post #20
DrBazza wrote: post #8

This 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.

Cofiwch Dryweryn!

And people say Hungarian is hard...
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