Giant flywheel project in Scotland could prevent UK blackouts

&gt; 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.<p>I&#x27;m trying to find some stats on this, because flywheel UPS aren&#x27;t a new idea:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.finning.com&#x2F;en_IE&#x2F;products&#x2F;new&#x2F;power-systems&#x2F;electric-power-generation&#x2F;ups-flywheel&#x2F;18499752.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.finning.com&#x2F;en_IE&#x2F;products&#x2F;new&#x2F;power-systems&#x2F;ele...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flywheel_storage_power_system#Power_grid_frequency_control" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Flywheel_storage_power_system#...</a>

Those things have interesting failure modes. Will they have to be buried underground, or is this somehow a solved problem?

Does anyone have any real information about this project? The Guardian article is essentially the same as the press releases on both GE&#x27;s and Statkraft&#x27;s web sites and says nothing about the scale of the project.

This discussion of a test flywheel installation in California seems a lot more interesting than this article.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ww2.energy.ca.gov&#x2F;2019publications&#x2F;CEC-500-2019-012&#x2F;CEC-500-2019-012.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ww2.energy.ca.gov&#x2F;2019publications&#x2F;CEC-500-2019-012&#x2F;...</a>

Does 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.

This is a consequence of the UK having little capacity for pumped-storage, i.e. hydro-electric. We don&#x27;t really have the height, and we have &quot;areas of outstanding natural beauty&quot; that cannot be built in easily, so we need alternatives to store the energy.<p>The rest of the world just builds a dam, creates a new lake, and moves on.

This sounds like a fancy syncon. They have been a thing in power network engineering for a long time.<p>I can believe it has &quot;new features&quot; 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.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodnewsfinland.com&#x2F;teraloop-secures-eur-2-4-million-grant&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodnewsfinland.com&#x2F;teraloop-secures-eur-2-4-mil...</a> - There&#x27;s a Finnish company called Teraloop who&#x27;ve been chipping away at a more Sci-Fi version involving maglev and evacuated loops.<p>Life gets difficult for this model because the heat induced due to current &#x27;turbulence&#x27; and maybe skin effect gets &#x27;stuck&#x27; inside the chamber. Fun engineering problems.

Why 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 &quot;bulbs&quot;. The computers have power bricks.<p>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.<p>Or am I wrong?

I don&#x27;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.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=gn5AM75AGvw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=gn5AM75AGvw</a>

How big and how fast must a flywheel be to perturb Earth&#x27;s rotation, in a similar method of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Control_moment_gyroscope" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Control_moment_gyroscope</a>

Wasn&#x27;t aware blackouts were a significant problem in the UK. Great device for moving away from fossil fuels though

well, assuming scotland doesn&#x27;t leave...

Feels like friction would eat away a lot of electricity, no?

&gt; will not generate electricity or produce carbon emissions<p>There is still a tonne of carbon used in creation...

Haven&#x27;t these been around forever? I went on a tour of a university tokomak in the 80&#x27;s and they had some giant flywheel for short-burst electrical energy.

Framing a flywheel as a &quot;simulation of a turbine&quot; is really bizarre, unless there&#x27;s something quite weird about this particular flywheel that the article fails to make clear.

Same article, no registration required. This site touts &quot;Powered by The Guardian&quot; and does not appear to be a scraper:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.execreview.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;giant-flywheel-project-in-scotland-could-prevent-uk-blackouts&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.execreview.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;giant-flywheel-project-in-...</a>