🚀 go-pugleaf

jeh@cmkrnl.com writes:

>I think what you mean here is "mount the flywheel in a gimbal mounting".  Fine,
>but now you have to come up with a really creative way of coupling large
>amounts of mechanical or electrical energy to the part of the car that's
>outside the gimbal mount.  This coupling, plus the gimbal bearings on which the
>flywheel assembly pivots, needs to be just as frictionless as the ones the
>flywheel spins on -- any heat produced here is energy drained from the
>"battery".  This ain't gonna be cheap!  Nor is it likely to survive long under
>the "maintenance habits" of the typical American car owner. 

I don't see the problem.  I mount the flywheel with its axis straight up.
Turns don't cause a problem, however banking and hill climbing do.  The
resistance to banking may actually be a plus, but lets assume for now that
it is undesirable.  OK so mount it in a gimbal mounting.  This allows that
flywheel to still point straight up as the car banks and goes up and down
hills.  Getting energy out is easy, just hook up the wires.  After all
the steepest banks and hills are under 30 degrees, so the flywheel is NOT
going to move much in its mounting.   This mounting need not be particularly
frictionless, (conventional bearings are MORE than adaquate, springs are
probably a possibility), since energy lost is proportional to movment which
there is simply not very much of.  The bearings the flywheel rests on will
experience NO MORE lateral force than is needed to move the whole flywheel
in its mounting (which is not very much).  By the same token, the car
can only experience that much undesirable force from the flywheel.  

By the way, every flywheel that I have seen that is designed for mass
energy storage uses magnetic bearings in a vacuum housing.  The bearings
are designed so that permanent magnets hold most of the flywheel up, and
electromagnets are used to keep the flywheel exactly in place (where it
touches nothing).  In theory such a system could be made to dissipate 
almost no power (in the current state of the art, spin ups can last
weeks).  Conventional bearings also surround the flywheel in case the
magnetic ones fail and for particularly bad jarring etc.  

Anyway, flywheels are definately a possibility.  They exist today as
experimental prototypes (see the Intersociety Conference on Energy 
Conversion Engineering for more information).  

Personally I see them only possibly being used in the transportation
sector in buses (where they can be recharged every 10-20 miles or so)  
That way the flywheels can be smaller, and hence safer and cheaper 
to make.  Also buses REALLY need the high power density and long 
life (many charge discharge cycles) that flywheels can give.

Vance