Wind Turbine Coil/Flywheel Hybrid

I'm kinda slow. Can you explain what advantages your system has over electrical generation?

This idea augments the power distribution by storing the power in the coils instead of using batteries or other storage techniques. Wind turbine companies are looking for solutions to store energy and transfer this to the grid during peak loads. This system gives them complete control and by adding the flywheel it allows a flow of energy to the grid within the required 1% tolerance.

So basically the advantage over electrical generation is it gives an option to store the energy in a more environmental method and gives more control to the power distribution.

By "steel coils" do you mean springs?

It would use something similar to what a wind up toy has been using for years.

That's the heart of the difficulty--the piddling amount of energy that can be stored this way. Physics and arithmetic are important keys to devising viable concepts.

Any research I can draw on from nano technologies? If the coil could be less resitant during the wind up phase and add more resistance to it during the generation phase it would be helpful.

I'm sorry, but that sounds like complete nonsense. Throwing buzzwords like "nano" at this certainly does not help.

Maybe you could look at synthetic muscle fiber technology.

Thank you for the suggestion, different materials and fibers may wind up more efficiently and release with greater force.

In general terms, I think this idea has merit.

At some point this mechanical energy has to be converted into electrical energy. Presently, this is done at the top of the turbine tower and the energy is put directly into the grid.

How do you deal with the losses of converting the mechanical energy into spring tension and then into flywheel energy? I think you should discard the springs and put the energy directly into the flywheel. You'll still have to convert it into electricity.

Good luck.

Agreed Lyn

The thing about flywheels, aside from scale, and losses over time - is they slow when power is extracted, and grid generation is rpm sensitive.

This usually means a dc output inverted to ac. Which is another set of losses.

Lyn I think, for this type of system the spring is some kind of buffering stuff. When the flywheel is about to go exhausted(considering the variability of wind) those springs will gonna be doing the job to maintain the inertia of the flywheel. That is one possibility Ive been thinking.

Well good luck for your design then.

If you're going to store mechanical energy, tcmtech has the right idea. Pump water up at night and let it run downhill, when needed.

Well, lyn. I try to think about it.

Is there a place where the system is described in more detail? The GE site provides little detail.

If you are suggesting storing energy in springs, this does not work in a meaningful sense (the energy density is orders of magnitude too low to be competitive with electrical batteries). For this reason, you do not see wind up cars on the street.

Flywheels, however, are well-proven for this type of application, (as in UPS systems) albeit very expensive to implement. They are not used in power plant scales, pumped hydro storage being the common, cost effective, method.

So basically the advantage over electrical generation

It seems you are describing electrical generation, which cannot logically have an advantage over electrical generation. Are there missing words?

Kinda slow? RIGHT!! How come you are usually the first one to post comments?

I am guessing that you are referring to the big commercial sized wind turbine units.

The simple fatal flaw is that at those power levels, 2 - 3 Megawatt hours per hour, that is an enormous amount of energy that needs to be stored over the 5 - 8 hour time periods of off peak operation when that energy is not needed.

I am not sure just how big of coil spring system and gearbox would be needed to store that level of power mechanically of just one unit at that power level but I have suspicions its way outside the realms of practical to build and be cost effective to operate as well.

The most practical and environmentally friendly/ beneficial and multi functional is the good old fashioned pumped water storage systems.

Hi Tcmtech, bear in mind this a competition entrant.

He is looking for comments and as far as I know commenting on the reasons why an idea is just not feasible/cost effective/outright impractical still counts in my book.

True and on reflection I shouldn't have commented as it would be serendipitous if all entrants were re-pumper grids - 'they' might get the message get some proper engineers and get on with it.

Thank you for your valued feedback. This is a great process to find out if something will functionally work. This is awesome! I'm hanging out in Washington State, not sure how I was placed in Romania, :D.

Please take this with a grain of whatever calms you down.

A young woman comes back to a watch shop and complains that the watch she had bought 2 days ago is not working anymore.

The old watch maker takes the watch gives it a few revs sets the right time and gives it back to the young woman and comments:

"But it's working just fine, see."

"So it doesn't need a battery?"

"No, you just wind it up."

"Wow" she replies "Why has nobody thought of this before!!"

Well, you put a scale to that and you will find that keeping the correct time needs not much power. But....

Hope all goes well, Ky.

Ky, as much as I like your comment,the only sensible way to make the large watch work efficiently and on a large scale is forget the springs and run the generators from compressed air. This way you can store time forever. Joe.

The amount of coil springs required to store the mechanical energy may be huge. May be more expensive than the batteries and coil springs will also need to be changed some time too like batteries. Access electric power has been used in pump storage to produce hydro-eclectic power when needed. This option could be used.

The concept of springs is ok theoretically. This is just a comment for the sake of discussion and not a criticism.

I'm going to continue to pursue the develeopment of this by building a small prototype. I'll post additional information as it becomes available. I was hoping to spark some discussion and get some excllent feedback and you did! Thank you, this forum is exceptional.

could you post your idea here

I don't see anything beyond comments &

Overview: My idea combnes the proven technology of wind turbines coupling steel coils to store wind energy and redistubuting through a flywheel system.

the more detailed the description the more detailed the feed back you will receive here.

The biggest enemy in any energy storage is conversion losses

As Ken pointed out the density of energy is not very good for springs or flywheels