Energy Secrets Series - Wind Turbines
A slow unveiling of the solutions to the problems plaguing mankind
Energy Secrets Series are short articles revealing the energy secrets necessary to revolutionise and stabilise the world’s energy grid. They’re written ad-hoc and won’t be sent out by email. Check by regularly.
One of the issues with wind turbines currently is that their power generation is intermittent, either on during wind, or off when there’s not. Power stabilisation looks at lithium-ion batteries or other novel solutions, however the solution for the turbine’s energy output stabilisation “problem” is pretty straight-forward. Painfully so.
Flywheels
Flywheels are good at storing rotational energy from devices, and are already considered for energy storage on the grid. What hasn’t been considered is pairing them up with wind turbines internally.
Flywheels can be used in one of two ways:
To absorb unwanted excess energy (such as during a braking operation), or
To store wanted excess energy temporarily (such as during power generation)
In the first case, the flywheel can be used when wind turbines ‘brake’ during periods of high wind speeds, allowing them to act very large counterweights to excessive wind, a buffer, if you will. When the turbine then slows down, the power can be returned to be absorbed by the energy grid.
In the second case, the turbine’s own rotational power could be sent to an interim flywheel first, allowing the flywheel to act as an energy buffer, so as the turbine speeds up or slows down, the flywheel averages out the power output, making energy output smoother and less sudden.
If a wind turbine was hooked up to a sufficiently large flywheel, it could absorb and store a lot of rotational power. Gearing would need to be used, so the turbine is able to start with a fully stopped flywheel at low speeds, and increase the gears as it picks up speed and the flywheel gains momentum.
Effectively, the flywheel becomes the turbine’s very own internalised, mechanical energy storage system, helping to solve one of the bigger issues with wind turbines.
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