Is this *FINALLY* a Break for Flywheel Energy Storage?

Flywheels are an age old technology at this point, but has Torus Energy finally made them work for the home generation market?

Sub count: 438

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:44 Who are Torus?
1:15 Technology
2:08 Advantages of FES
3:56 Why now?
5:16 The catch
6:30 Where Flywheels make sense
6:59 Decentralised Grids

Sources:

#flywheel #renewableenergy #solar

[aussieideasman]

Surprised nobody has picked up on the pun - flywheels are revolutionary.

[NateWalkingshaw]

Thank you for a great video. So well done and covers a broad range of applications and use cases. A couple of facts on our wheel. The motor on the power side is 40 kw (nominal) 88kw peak. Storage has three different sizes in kWH. 15, 22, and 50. The motors are hot swappable depending on use case. EV fast charging, commercial/industrial or large scale utility. The price in the article highlighted was for a full home systems. Solar, hybrid inverter and hybrid chemical + flywheel storage. Which is why the price point is so high. This wheel will last for 25-years so the levelized cost of storage is exceptionally competitive to the life of almost all chemical batteries. The goal here is to divide the cost over those 25-years vs needing to repurchase chemical batteries that are tough to recycle every 7-10 years. Last part. Chemical batteries like to be in the 80%-20% charge and discharge range. So a 10kWh battery really is a 5ish kWH battery. Flywheels are 0%/100%/0% so the full range with no memory loss. All energy storage has drawbacks and flywheels have plenty. But for the use cases highlighted in this video they do a great job. Again, thank you so much for this we are a passionate team dedicating ourselves to this endeavor and the time you took to cover us without us even knowing Torus meant a lot to the team. So thank you.

[michiganengineer]

20 years ago I looked at flywheel systems for use at work (a TV studio and a separate one for the transmitter). Now both locations had (and have) 200kW diesel generators. However, those take roughly 30 seconds to start and stabilize. We wanted the flywheel system as a whole facility "backup" to give the generators time to come online. The price was enough that we could have purchased another brand new generator for both locations. That said, if the price tag drops a bit more I can see these coming into play more for commercial applications where you need CLEAN power until a generator kicks in. Hospitals, datacenters, cell towers even. Your HOME user is going to want something that will run for a longer time.

[DimebagDarrenLowe]

you are real, you did your own voice over, so i subscribed. Good On You

[PraxZimmerman]

Nah man, i do contract work for a lot of data centers and every one that has installed a flywheel hate the stupid things within 2 years. With all the specialized maintenance required they have twice the running cost for 1/20th the storage capacity.

[GLHerzberg]

10kWh then 32kWh then 10kWh. Hard to understand what the storage capacity rating really is.

[GoBayside]

White smooth outside, no visible buttons, minimalist font. it's it i-flywheel.

[ericlotze]

5:50 For that one time purchase. It depends on how often you would swap the battery but there is that to take into account, also round trip efficiency conversion in storage time spans below the self discharge issue (so sub 2 days or so, like overnight HVAC etc). If I remember correctly FES is more efficient than batteries in this regard?

Also not measurable in USD per se, but at least for me, the recyclability is a MAJOR selling point.

[CubbyTech]

I'm guessing that the 10kW systems are basically 'mini' or proof of concept for extreme environments. I suspect that they won't ultimately compete in the home energy space, but should have a nice alternative to the giant grid-tied storage systems like the Megapack, for less money?

[toddmarshall]

I'm surprised that their form factor is about as tall as it is in diameter. The energy is related to the square of the radius and only linearly with the height. Why aren't we seeing a form factor that is a thin large diameter disk...with the mass held out by spokes?

[davysprocket]

1/2 a ton rotating at what rpm? Those bearings better not ever touch down and bind up or you've got a terrifying flying chunk of metal on your hands, and going through the side of your house, and your neighbours...
I had a professor in university and we did a capstone engineering project on this exact design challenge and becuase of the safety risk involved we had to specify that the vacuum flywheel enclosure be stored in its own concrete bunker. Enclosure was vacuum tight for 25 years with the rated leakage of the connectors, then drop it into its vault and leave it alone.

[frescogelato]

Hi, do you have any data on the self-discharge rate when in stand-by? Thanks

[walterbrown]

Please define the term "Hot Swappable" - Would that include physically moving a device with a large spinning mass ? (This brings to mind events like attempting to replace a vertical gyro in a military aircraft before the spinning mass had stopped.)

[Noisy_Cricket]

To me, flywheels should be used for communal energy storage, and modular. By "modular, " I mean that flywheels should be huge (like, an 18' diameter or more) and you should be able to split the flywheel's wheel into three parts. This would make maintenance and installation a lot easier.

[mikemotorbike]

Where they shine is for instance in a hospital battery backup system, stabilizing the grid electricity, as the flywheel absorbs the brunt of the many transients which otherwise accelerate wear of the chemical batteries. Without hospital backup batteries, the let's say 20x daily body scans of the large MRIs etc would overwhelm local grid. Also, up to 20, 000 daily city grid noisy transient surges and dips pound the expensive chemical battery acting as a filter, drastically reducing its life. So flywheel absorbs punches from outside and inside, lasting up to 20 years before chem batt replacement.

[LittleSpot]

in Germany a 8kWh DIY LFP Battery is around 2000€. This price will be going lower in the next 12months. Connecting such a battery to the grid is standard procedure. Fly wheel has no chance against this low lfp prices.

[malk]

What's the rate of self discharge (or did I miss this in the video)?

[swedneck]

The thing i always come back to with flywheels is how we had buses powered by flywheels MORE THAN 50 YEARS AGO that were perfectly usable, at this point we must surely have the technology to even run some small train lines with flywheels!

[MrFranklitalien]

I say this with absolute confidence,
flywheels are scary as hell when it comes to what happens in case of failure;
scaling of such setups imply the inevitable catastrophic break,
wouldn't want to be anywhere near it

[jonathanwest]

Flywheels are very much a special needs thing. I am fascinated with Gyrobus; City transit buses with flywheels. In the 1950's 60's were lead acid batteries didn't have the power storage. And running an overhead power line for the entire bus route could not be justified. So, they had an overhead 3 phase power at the BUS STOP at either 2 or 10km intervals. But it appears that a 3-ton gyroscope causes wear and tear issues when you start to bounce it around.