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Power United Kingdom

Giant Flywheel Project In Scotland Could Prevent UK Blackouts (theguardian.com) 234

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A giant flywheel in north-east Scotland could soon help to prevent blackouts across Britain by mimicking the effect of a power station but without using fossil fuels. The trailblazing project near Keith in Moray, thought to cost about 25 million British pounds, will not generate electricity or produce carbon emissions -- but it could help keep the lights on by stabilizing the energy grid's electrical frequency. The Norwegian energy company Statkraft hopes that from next winter the new flywheel, designed by a division of General Electric, will be able to mimic the spinning turbines of a traditional power station, which have helped to balance the grid's frequency at about 50 hertz for decades.

Currently, the National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) is forced to shut down windfarms and run gas power stations even when there is more than enough renewable energy to meet Britain's electricity demand, in order to keep the grid's frequency steady. By simulating the spinning metal mass of a power station turbine without producing emissions, Statkraft should be able to help ESO rely less on fossil fuels and use renewable energy more. 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.

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Giant Flywheel Project In Scotland Could Prevent UK Blackouts

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  • Correct link (Score:5, Informative)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Monday July 06, 2020 @10:37PM (#60270042) Homepage Journal

    Since the slashdot editors can't even get the tiniest basics right.

    https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]

    • by Ksevio ( 865461 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @12:01AM (#60270194) Homepage

      They figured that no one reads the articles anyways, so why not just make it a link to the comments for the people that accidentally click the wrong spot?

      • by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @12:12AM (#60270218)

        They figured that no one reads the articles anyways, so why not just make it a link to the comments for the people that accidentally click the wrong spot?

        I usually wait for the second time the article is posted before I read it.

        That way I know it's important

      • by bobby ( 109046 )

        They're learning recursion.

      • They figured that no one reads the articles anyways, so why not just make it a link to the comments for the people that accidentally click the wrong spot?

        Not far off, the thread was pretty full of comments with the loopback link.

    • In any case it won't help deal with backouts, when it's actually needed we'll find those cannae Scots have let it spin down to save money.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Scotland is aiming to generate 200% of its electricity from renewable sources. Not a typo, 200% so they can export half of it. After the British government squandered all their oil this is a chance to build a long term, sustainable energy export market.

    • by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @05:55AM (#60270656)

      Thanks for the link.

      This thread may be the longest one I've seen yet before the first comment actually mentioning the article.

  • by gTsiros ( 205624 ) on Monday July 06, 2020 @10:46PM (#60270072)

    I like that. Simple, brutal, inefficient, reliable.

    Well, as reliable as mechanical devices go.

    • It's not really that inefficient at that scale. Imagine the scale and number of tubes (valves) or power transistors to do the same job at those currents and voltages, and the cooling problems. As you say, simple, brutal and reliable. Just remember to keep the bearings lubed.
    • by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @02:16AM (#60270360)

      I initially thought the artcle was about storing energy in a large flywheel but that is not the aim. It' a 'damper for short term changes in frequency ' . Traditional powerplants have forms of inertia which solar cell plants do not have so you need to built dedicated dampers to complement that.

    • My father had a antique ax grinder.(a large stone wheel, on an axle) as a kid I use to play with it, and was rather amazed on how long it would spin for, and how hard it was to stop it. As a younger kid before I understood the laws of thermal dynamics I was like why don't we put a motor and a generator on it. Spin it up for a few seconds then generate power with it, for a longer period of time. Granted that was a stupid idea, but I was a kid. However the Flywheel is a good short term energy storage d

  • by mbkennel ( 97636 ) on Monday July 06, 2020 @11:06PM (#60270110)

    Electrochemical batteries, at present mostly lithium ion, can do this task, and respond even faster than traditional "spinning storage", providing even better grid stabilization. But flywheels won't have any degradation from cycling unlike chemical batteries.

    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday July 06, 2020 @11:14PM (#60270130) Journal

      You're going to need one hell of an inverter to stabilize the frequency of the entire grid.

      This isn't about storing energy for days or hours. This is about the difference between 50Hz and 51Hz. That is, preventing it from rising or falling 1/100th of a second too soon.

      • Makes me curious if the principles behind constant-speed drives used in aircraft generators are applicable at this scale. Seems to typically be a combined hydraulic pump and motor ("hydrokinetic transmission"), coupled through a governing mechanism to enable the generator to synchronize with the other on board. It seems like it should be possible to attach a flywheel to the grid through a synchronous generator and CVT of some sort; perhaps something not entirely unlike a self-contained hydroelectric generat
        • Basically, once the generator is synchronized with the grid, applying additional torque will generate power (rather than turning faster), or be dragged along with the system (rather than slowing down) if input torque is reduced (running as a synchronous motor), within certain limits (outside of which the rotor would overspeed or stall, requiring it to be promptly disconnected from the system).
          • That's typically how the power grid works. Mass and magnetic flux provides the hysteris and cushioned linkage that the hydraulic fluid would in your example. A torque converter uses hydraulic fluid to make a strong but not solid connection between two rotating parts. Generators use magnets for the strong, but not solid, connection.

            So this part of what you said perfectly describes how it normally works:
            --
            Basically, once the generator is synchronized with the grid, applying additional torque will generate p

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        A year or two back they had a blackout because two generators went offline suddenly at the same time. One was a gas plant, the other a wind farm that suffered a fault on the grid connection. Anyway the frequency fell to about 48Hz and National Grid deliberately caused a blackout in some areas to reduce the load while backup sources came online.

        The idea with this seems to be to provide some stability during normal times and some short term cover in an emergency. Unfortunately TFA doesn't give any figures for

        • You are missing the issue here.

          When generation is rotational, the generators naturally do what this flywheel does. If there is a short-term usage spike, the inertia supplies the power. If there is a short-term usage dip, inertia is added to. This keeps the short-term demands on the generation manageable. Instead of needing to respond in a couple of cycles, they can ramp up and down power over minutes.

          If you look at the generation chart for wind, it is very noisy. Something needs to buffer this so that

      • by stooo ( 2202012 )

        The flywheel needs exatly the same inverter bank because the flywheels are not run synchronously.
        In fact, the flywheel system needstwo times the inverter bank ( grid side and flywheel side.)

      • Thats precisely where batteries excel. They just provide support for the end of the rising wave form. Mechanical devices have too much inertia to respond that fast. Battery banks, charging a capacitor through the entire cycle, discharging it at the top of rising wave form can do wonders. It often takes a MW of battery power to provide frequency support for a 100 GW circuit.
      • You're going to need one hell of an inverter to stabilize the frequency of the entire grid.

        Only if your goal is to be the singular source of stability. It's not. The inverters we're talking about here are smaller than any decently sized solar farm. Look at Tesla's Hornsdale power reserve, it has a 70MW inverter dedicated to frequency correction, and was able to stabilise the grid when a coal plant tripped a state over with oodles of capacity to spare, to say nothing of regulating a small wind farm which is its primary purpose.

        It doesn't take a large inverter to do this as they are only providing

    • Chemical battery: 697 000 $ / MWh fully installed, price is dropping
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      Flywheel storage : 2 600 000 $ / MWh
      https://www.energy.gov/sites/p... [energy.gov]

      Tesla battery wins.

  • by M214 ( 3546763 )
    How is this really different from a flywheel motor/generator from days of yore? "This is the first time a project of this kind will be used anywhere in the world" seems aa tad overstated.
    • yes, but read the first part of that sentence again, "project of this kind" is the important part in the grid scenario
  • Thhe idea isn't new (Score:5, Informative)

    by ras ( 84108 ) <russell+slashdot ... au minus painter> on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @12:03AM (#60270198) Homepage

    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.

    Another name for these things is a synchronous condenser. They are not exactly new. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: The use of rotating synchronous condensers was common through the 1950s. Possibly the difference is synchronous condensers were often used to improve the power factor rather than store power, but I expect both do that.

    • I sometimes work in a very rural shop with limited electrical capabilities, and you have to turn the milling machine on in order to get the lathe to start, or it causes quite a brown out!

    • From the description on Wikipedia it sounds like the Synchronous Condenser was developed for power factor correction rather than frequency maintainance.

      Many years ago I worked on a site with a huge capacitor farm behind the back fence. I'm talking about capacitors taller than me connected to their own sub-station. I was told that one of the neighbouring companies used something with a non-unity power factor and it was cheaper for them to maintain the capacitor farm and associated switchgear than pay the pow

  • by whit3 ( 318913 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @01:48AM (#60270304)
    Northern Scotland isn't on the equator, so an earth-axis-parallel flywheel will be a tilted spinner
    (either that, or the precession of the gyroscope will endanger its moorings and crack the foundation).

    And, spinning it up will change the length of the day slightly... unless you spin up several, in pairs, in opposite directions.

    Have astronomers been brought in to discuss the side effects? And geologists, I suppose?
    I'm envisioning a demonstration in favor of angular-momentum neutrality.

    • ...or the precession of the gyroscope will endanger its moorings and crack the foundation

      Indeed, the picture shows a flywheel with the axis parallel to the earth, diameter 5 m, thickness 2 m. That would be a moment of inertia I=1e+6 kg m^2. The forced precession (by the earth's rotation at 56.5 deg latitude) is 6e-5 rad/s, so the torque to be carried by the bearings is I*omega*(d angle/dt)=6e+3 Nm. I think they can handle that.

    • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @06:16AM (#60270704) Journal
      What you say can happen but the chances are remote.

      But the immediate pressing danger for this arrangement is, this contraption is moored to the British Isles. The wrenching motion and the reaction torque can twist England in the counter clockwise direction and widen the English channel in the south and close the north sea in the north.

      The ruptured continental crust would let out all the oil in the basin and it would be a catastrophe.

  • by polar red ( 215081 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @04:15AM (#60270516)

    how does this compare to tesla big battery https://www.sciencealert.com/r... [sciencealert.com] efficiency, cost, ... , anyone know?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I spent some time looking but I can't find any details about this thing's capacity. My guess is they are not saying because it's not spectacular and this is more of a demonstration plant.

  • Here in Australia Tesla build a giant battery to do exactly what this wheel is going to do (keep the frequency in line as well as store enough power to keep the grid going while slower power sources such as gas generators spin up to handle a sudden jump in demand).
    And all the evidence is that its working perfectly for both tasks.

  • Like the Australians.

  • Technology (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @06:09AM (#60270688) Homepage

    I do love the way that technology has gone backwards.

    From windmills and huge grindstones and water-mills, through to semiconductor electronics and nuclear power (which still included steam-generators admittedly), and now back to windmills and watermills (albeit in dams or oceans) and huge stones rotating to store power.

    All our modern tech and it still sounds like small-scale projects that powered remote farms centuries ago.

  • by packrat0x ( 798359 ) on Tuesday July 07, 2020 @04:40PM (#60272994)

    The US has three phase voltages such as 120/208, 277/480, 348/600 (more common in Canada), and 2300/4000, not including transmission voltages (1000+ volts).

    120/240 and 120/208 are normally used on short runs (less then 60m), but there is the option to upsize the wire. For longer runs we use higher voltages and then a step down transformer.

If all else fails, lower your standards.

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