Kick starters and flywheel technology

[kwilcox]

Both concepts subject to repeated ridicule here. I myself took a massive tongue lashing when I announced info on one particular kickstarter funded initiative after I first joined. (see my first post ever, #97 in this thread and as part of my introduction in this thread).

So go here:

velkess.com

It's real. I'm especially enthusiastic about the Velkess A flywheel which will essentially allow me to transform my traditional grid tied array to an off-grid configuration that will power kitchen and car charging port branch circuits. There will be no interaction/connection between it and my traditional POCO electric service, thus making my home a hybrid energy consumer that will insulate me from the draconian tariff policy that WE Energies has introduced to squash renewables here in WI. I'll simply need less energy from them and will convert to a standard rate tier. The plan will be to reduce my dependence branch circuit by branch circuit as the overall technology continues to improve. It is no co-incidence that products such as this one are now coming online in droves since the need is driven in no small part by the policy of energy providers such as WE Energies themselves.

I'll be watching the Velkess A closely when the company begins shipping next year. Here's a status update from the funding site (which is no longer accepting funding and is now used as a means to send out updates to supporters) that explains the offerings:

kickstarter.com/projects/1340066560/velkess-energy-storage/posts/1170295

The products themselves were subsequently launched in early April.

[SunEagle]

Both concepts subject to repeated and massive ridicule here. I myself took a massive tongue lashing when I announced info on this particular kickstarter funded initiative when I first joined.

So here:

velkess.com


Its real.

I am always interested in reading about new energy generating technology. While the flywheel has been around a while there is always the potential of finding something better.

So how many of those Velkess L or A have you purchased or invested in?

[kwilcox]

2016 is my planned date to begin switching to hybrid. This year, I'm doing infrastructure (putting in the new kitchen and garage branch circuits along with a new load center for the off-grid system itself). We're also improving our overall energy efficiency with new windows, insulation etc. I've already moved major appliances over to natural gas which will be a good near-term solution.

My PV grid-tie rate is grandfathered in for 10 years so I have time to wait for prices to drop as this technology matures and gets field tested.

[bcroe]

People have suggested flywheels for a long time; they never seem to survive the real
world. I remember many decades ago a bus that powered up its flywheel at each stop,
never heard any more about it. Recently saw a com center backup flywheel, but then
read it had been removed. Lets see some real products in the real world. Bruce Roe

[Sunking]

My PV grid-tie rate is grandfathered in for 10 years so I have time to wait for prices to drop as this technology matures and gets field tested.

If flywheel technology were a human, it would have died long time ago from old age.

[J.P.M.]

If flywheel technology were a human, it would have died long time ago from old age.

Or a fart.

[russ]

Both concepts subject to repeated ridicule here. I myself took a massive tongue lashing when I announced info on one particular kickstarter funded initiative after I first joined. (see my first post ever, #97 in this thread and as part of my introduction in this thread).

The tooth fairy and Yeti are more likely to show up - the crowd funding thingies are generally a means to transfer funds from the average Joe to some dingbat with a scheme where he doesn't have to work.

Flywheels from a big company have not happened - from a small shoe string operation it is near impossible.

I still ridicule the idea.

[SunEagle]

People have suggested flywheels for a long time; they never seem to survive the real
world. I remember many decades ago a bus that powered up its flywheel at each stop,
never heard any more about it. Recently saw a com center backup flywheel, but then
read it had been removed. Lets see some real products in the real world. Bruce Roe

I have to go find the article I recently read but they listed all of the types of "energy storage" in the world along with the listed Wattage & percentage.

They listed about a half dozen battery chemistries along with Hydro, Salt and other thermal systems.

While Hydro storage was at the top, surprisingly Flywheel technology was not at the bottom and (from my memory) was listed as having close to 1MW of "storage" capacity in use.

If we could get past the losses due to gravity and friction, flywheel storage might become useful. Maybe possible in space while at low gravity but on earth it is a losing proposition..

[kwilcox]

The tooth fairy and Yeti are more likely to show up - the crowd funding thingies are generally a means to transfer funds from the average Joe to some dingbat with a scheme where he doesn't have to work.

Flywheels from a big company have not happened - from a small shoe string operation it is near impossible.

I still ridicule the idea.

And yet here is a small company launching two highly affordable flywheel based products. Its all about paradigms Russ. You are living on one perpetuated by the big energy industry that you are an engineering part of. Thus, the flywheel model you are familiar with is based on precision machining to prevent self destruction at high velocity. Very expensive, very delicate. A pile of hooey to consider it for home use.

The technology used for these flywheels is revolutionary. That's why I took interest initially. They are supported by a single magnetic bearing at the top, rotate horizontally like a lasso and don't need to be perfectly machined to prevent self destruction at high rpms. A lasso can achieve high rotational velocity because the structure is inherently stable. The same principal is at work here. By eliminating the need for precision machining, you make the system smaller and cheaper. The velkess flywheel is constructed using kevlar rope. Bob got manufacturing on board when he demonstrated the system running at mach velocities.

I'm looking forward to installing a velkess A in 2016. Even at the initial cost of $750/year over its 10 year lifetime, the cost will be about half what WE energy wants to charge annually for "capacity demand" on my 4KW system.

[kwilcox]

I have to go find the article I recently read but they listed all of the types of "energy storage" in the world along with the listed Wattage & percentage.

They listed about a half dozen battery chemistries along with Hydro, Salt and other thermal systems.

While Hydro storage was at the top, surprisingly Flywheel technology was not at the bottom and (from my memory) was listed as having close to 1MW of "storage" capacity in use.

If we could get past the losses due to gravity and friction, flywheel storage might become useful. Maybe possible in space while at low gravity but on earth it is a losing proposition..

Yup, POCOs use flywheels today. They are suprisingly common. Beacon Power opened a 5MWh, (20 MW over 15 mins) flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York in 2011. Lower carbon emissions, faster response times and ability to buy power at off-peak hours are among some advantages of using flywheels instead of traditional sources of energy for peaking power plants. A 2MW flywheel storage facility opened in Ontario, Canada in 2014. It uses a spinning steel flywheel on magnetic bearings.

The Velkess bearing is also magnetic in an evacuated enclosure. It was the most difficult engineering challenge faced by the project engineers.

What's truly sad here is that POCOs could easily be driving storage technology to build a smart grid that can inherently store and deliver energy; in fact this is where it needs to be. They could make my valid capacity demand rate (how much using their "battery" to store my excess energy costs me) much more reasonable. They won't though because big energy has become an investment scheme instead of a utility. The end result of this strategy will be the destruction of centralized energy delivery systems and the emergence of micro grids. This isn't good for anybody.

[SunEagle]

Yup, POCOs use flywheels today. They are suprisingly common. Beacon Power opened a 5MWh, (20 MW over 15 mins) flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York in 2011. Lower carbon emissions, faster response times and ability to buy power at off-peak hours are among some advantages of using flywheels instead of traditional sources of energy for peaking power plants. A 2MW flywheel storage facility opened in Ontario, Canada in 2014. It uses a spinning steel flywheel on magnetic bearings.

The Velkess bearing is also magnetic in an evacuated enclosure. It was the most difficult engineering challenge faced by the project engineers.

What's truly sad here is that POCOs could easily be driving storage technology to build a smart grid that can inherently store and deliver energy; in fact this is where it needs to be. They could make my valid capacity demand rate (how much using their "battery" to store my excess energy costs me) much more reasonable. They won't though because big energy has become an investment scheme instead of a utility. The end result of this strategy will be the destruction of centralized energy delivery systems and the emergence of micro grids. This isn't good for anybody.

The issue with flywheels is the amount of space they take up (mostly in height) as compared to the amount of energy it can generate. For small applications they work (I used one on a small computer system to ride through a power dip long enough for a gen set to come on.) But for large applications they are a maintenance headache.

There are also safety issues on how would you stop a "very big" inertia wheel if there is a problem. The "breaking system" is very costly.

So while flywheels are used for short term energy storage IMO they fall way short of a practical way of storing energy from solar to be used at night.

[Sunking]

Lower carbon emissions, faster response times and ability to buy power at off-peak hours are among some advantages of using flywheels instead of traditional sources of energy for peaking power plants.

Now you are just making things up and easy to poke holes through. Flywheels are very inefficient and was very careless to say lower carbon emissions. Flywheel technology has never caught on for this very fact, and never will go much of anywhere. To many inefficient mechanical and electrical conversions, and poor energy density.

[kwilcox]

The flywheel installations I cited are real as are the reasons Sunking. Your quote of my post above was not something I wrote but was in fact lifted from a Beacon Power promotional paper.

[kwilcox]

The issue with flywheels is the amount of space they take up (mostly in height) as compared to the amount of energy it can generate. For small applications they work (I used one on a small computer system to ride through a power dip long enough for a gen set to come on.) But for large applications they are a maintenance headache.

There are also safety issues on how would you stop a "very big" inertia wheel if there is a problem. The "breaking system" is very costly.

So while flywheels are used for short term energy storage IMO they fall way short of a practical way of storing energy from solar to be used at night.

The velkess flywheels are 40" cubes and store 3-15KWh. Cost includes an automatic "safe shutdown" feature which renders them unusable. Not a good solution for earthquake zones. To avoid safe shutdown you use a commissioning/decomissioning process initiated via the built in gui if you want to move them around. They are designed to be stacked too so add more if you need more storage. Conservatively speaking, I'd need 40 of them in a 7x7 array (25 square feet by 40" tall if I can't also stack vertically) to store the full 550kWh daily maximum production from my array but my excess daily energy production is far less.

I've got numbers on my daily excess as well as nightime kitchen circuit demand that I'll use to price the system. I also run a server farm that uses .5KWh 7x24 that may be a better initial candidate for the off-grid portion of my overall demand. Maybe it won't be feasible initially in 2016 but price always drops as demand increases and tech improves.

I believe velkess is significant in that they are the first viable home energy storage system that uses flywheel tech. Having a 100% discharge capability with unlimited cycles over a 10 year lifetime along with zero maintenance/charging requirements is significant in my book. I'm still waiting for maximum charge rate characteristics since my system can produce an excess of up to 4 KWh against whole house demand at peak sun.

[russ]

These clowns are the first? Hardly! What do they have they will cause them to be a success where all others failed? Nothing!

You are so determined to find something "cute" that you are a sucker for this type of thing.