Using Flywheels to Meet Peak Power Grid Demands

hackertourist writes "A novel type of electricity storage was recently added to the New York power grid. The unit, supplied by Beacon Power, uses flywheels to store energy. This system is intended to replace gas turbines in supplying short-term peaks in power demand (also known as frequency regulation). It can supply up to 20 MW, using 200 flywheels." If you can't afford a 200-flywheel system, you can always get a racetrack-ready Porsche 911 GT3 R Hybrid, which has a single energy-storage flywheel that can give you a 160 HP burst of power when you need a little extra oomph.

Comments

Re:What's the cost?

[bluefoxlucid]

The humans making the decisions don't understand Go. They're not even engineers, so they haven't seen all the numbers. Hell, even engineers look at cost comparisons, but not total impact: they may look at the CO2 output of a particular form of power generation, and the price, and see that it is manageable and cheaper and better; but they don't see that the CO2 output of building the damn thing divided by its useful lifetime is much higher than a heavy polluter coal plant that lasts much longer and is easy as hell to build.

Most people are stuck in the corner, trying to save one thing in isolation, and then wanting to have everything, and still as separate pieces. They do not back off to see the whole, and make exchanges to stay overall ahead. The whole of the board is a mystery to them, and they only jump from section to section, trying to fight small local battles without seeing how they hurt other positions.