Livermore scientist still reinventing the wheel at 94

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23379066/east-bay-profile-livermore-scientist-still-reinventing-wheel

by tmoretti • 13 years ago

104 44 13 years ago

beambot• 13 years ago

"Energy bills would be essentially zero," he says. I'm not sure how this statement is accurate (or relevant). Flywheels do not produce energy, they store kinetic energy. Other comments...

(1) I seem to recall an automobile developed in the 60s or 70s by another National Lab that siphoned off stored power from a flywheel (driven by a smaller motor). IIRC, they had hellish issues with handling since the flywheel created gyro effects as the car turned. [Sorry, I couldn't find a link to the project. ]

(2) The failure modes for flywheels aren't pretty. This seems to be the big detractor from other technologies like the MIT microturbine [1]. You wouldn't want one of 'em to experience catastrophic failure when attached to the cellphone in your pants. To get sufficient shielding, you have to substantially up the weight of the power storage unit, thereby killing your power-to-weight ratios.

[1] http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/microengines.html

dredmorbius4• 13 years ago

The story leaves a lot to be desired in terms of defining technology and specifying methods.

Depending on how you buy/sell power, and if you have access to TOU metering, you could spin up flywheels with cheap power and sell it back when rates are higher. If you've got your own generation on site (solar PV, wind, tidal), you could bank excess energy with flywheels.

In terms of storage, flywheel round-trip efficiency is very, very good, above 90% for well-designed systems. The problem has always been storage density and cost. Beacon Power produces 25KWh flywheels priced at around $1000 /Wh.

Add into this the failure modes (Beacon's systems are installed underground in concrete culvert pipe with a several-ton lid cap), and remaining problems with precession (even the Earth's rotation around its axis peturbs flywheels), and they have some significant hurdles. For mobile uses (automobiles, etc.) these problems are compounded.

My money's on large, cheap batteries for grid-scale storage (molten salt or liquid metal), though flywheels for short-cycle load/generation matching may play a role.

nitrogen• 13 years ago

Beacon Power produces 25KWh flywheels priced at around $1000 /Wh.

Is that really a $25mil flywheel? Or should that have been $1000/KWh?

For mobile uses (automobiles, etc.) these problems are compounded.

I'm probably demonstrating considerable mechanical naivety with this question, but could you balance multiple flywheels in different directions and orientations to mitigate these problems?

DanBC• 13 years ago

>Flywheels do not produce energy, they store kinetic energy.

The article says, twice, that his design both stores and generates energy. Have they got something wrong? I'm aware that they're using the term 'flywheel' pretty broadly, and his newer device might not be a traditional flywheel. They use scare-quotes a couple of times when using the term flywheel, so they seem to be saying it's not a flywheel.

> His latest project -- perfecting a prototype of his lightweight "flywheel," a cylindrical, rotating battery -- could revolutionize the energy industry, storing and creating energy better than any conventional electrobattery on the planet.

> Post has been called the "father of the modern flywheel," a title he dismisses as "too generous." The rapidly spinning devices not only store energy with minimal losses, but they also generate it.

The relevance is also mentioned in the story - he wanted to "apply physics to help solve the world's energy problems" and banks of these in power stations might help. Isn't storing the excess power generated by solar farms during the day a problem? Couldn't something like this help with that?

ars8• 13 years ago

You can't just generate energy from nothing. A flywheel stores energy, it doesn't create it. So yes, they got something wrong.

contingencies6• 13 years ago

The Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage claims that, in comparison to batteries, flywheels are not as adversely affected by temperature changes, can operate at a much wider temperature range, and are not subject to many of the common failures of chemical rechargeable batteries. They are also less potentially damaging to the environment, being largely made of inert or benign materials. A flywheel can potentially have an indefinite working lifespan. Flywheels built as part of James Watt steam engines have been continuously working for more than two hundred years. Another advantage of flywheels is that by a simple measurement of the rotation speed it is possible to know the exact amount of energy stored. Flywheels with Magnetic bearings and high vacuum can maintain 97% mechanical efficiency, and 85% round trip efficiency.

Why aren't these in wide deployment yet as local storage for renewable energy sources? The biggest problems seems to be overall mass, cost, and space efficiency. None are great concerns for long term energy storage solutions for off-grid buildings. In short, these things sound fantastic. Anyone know where to buy one large enough to store power for a small draw, solar sourced home?

This site explains a lot more about the concept, and engineering considerations behind two functional prototypes: http://home.earthlink.net/~fradella/homepage.htm

Flywheels in vehicles were the subject on an article in the Economist in late 2011: Road tests have shown that, thanks to modern materials and clever design, a flywheel as small as a hockey puck can reduce fuel consumption by more than one-fifth. In electric hybrids only 35% of the kinetic energy lost during braking is retrievable. With flywheels more than 70% is. http://www.economist.com/node/21540386

And someone just got funded on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1340066560/velkess-energ... .. they claim Energy storage flywheels have been in use for over 100 years and are some of the highest performing energy storage technologies ever developed. Traditionally, they have suffered one fatal flaw... they are extremely expensive! Velkess has invented a way of making energy storage flywheels at such low cost it will be dramatically less expensive than even the most economical energy storage technologies available today. Phys.org discussion of this effort: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-velkess-flywheel-flexible-energ...

gcb0• 13 years ago

Because you can't shake it.

ars8• 13 years ago

The biggest problem is they don't store enough energy. Or in other words, they don't store enough per how much they cost.

The energy capacity goes up linearly by mass, but goes up by the speed squared. So all the effort has gone toward increasing the speed.

But the trouble is that the force on the flywheel also goes up by the speed squared. The only materials strong enough are wound carbon fibers - and they are very very costly.

If you increase the mass instead you need very very large and strong bearings, and they tend to fail. For high speed, low weight, you barely need any bearing at all - magnetic bearings are preferred if you can manage it.

dredmorbius4• 13 years ago

The Oil Drum has a pretty good reference on flywheel technology and reasonably recent developments as well: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8428

_pmf_• 13 years ago

> I seem to recall an automobile developed in the 60s or 70s by another National Lab that siphoned off stored power from a flywheel (driven by a smaller motor).

One possibly feasible application that comes to mind are automotive turbo chargers. Compared with current approaches, a flywheel does not actually seem that convoluted.

jckt• 13 years ago

"laptop running a sophisticated math program"

I wonder what that is?

Or is it just Mathematica or something?

JamesArgo• 13 years ago

99% sure it's Mathematica.

perryh22• 13 years ago

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore use a lot of software that I believe is not available to the public (e.g. scientific simulations). Mesquite is one custom LLNL software [1]. MATLAB is very common, but I didn't see much (if any) usage of Mathematica (intern last summer).

[1] https://iscr.llnl.gov/annual_report/fy2005/subcontracts/kraf...

toomuchtodo• 13 years ago

If its written by the government, its required to be in the public domain.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

Bob Yamamoto, a mechanical engineer and principal investigator on the project, compares working with Post to being around a college student with 60 years of experience. Post, he says, exudes a level of enthusiasm that's hard to keep up with.

Wow. What an inspiration.

Reminds me of Dr. Hinohara, a physician and educator who has been contributing to the medical field since 1941 and remains active in the field today at the age of 101.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/23/shigeaki-hinohara-t...

perryh22• 13 years ago

I worked at Lawrence Livermore as an intern last summer. There were many people, including Post, that have worked at the lab for their entire lives. It was normal to sit next to scientists that were well beyond retirement age during lunch. While a career at the lab may not come with the many luxuries offered at other opportunities in Silicon Valley, it didn't seem bad either. People (including myself) were very happy to work there. Post, as well as many others, were a huge source of inspiration and taught me to do what I am passionate about in my career.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

My friend from college has been shuttling between MIT and Lawrence Livermore for a few years now (he does particle detection for the nuclear fusion experiments). Having talked to him at length, I'm convinced that while a career at the lab may not be as flashy as some of the best careers across the bay, it would be an absolutely wonderful way to live life and contribute to the world through science.

I'm not nearly smart enough to work there, but boy do I look up to those who do!

kbd• 13 years ago

This man has more mental energy at nearly 100 than I do in my 30s. What a gift he has.

eric_j_j• 13 years ago

I lived down the street from this guy. Sharp as a tack.

waster• 13 years ago

"Independent of his age, he has ideas coming out of his mind minute-by-minute," Yamamoto says. "He's so full of energy from all these ideas he has over the weekend, that every Monday morning he can't wait to call me and talk to me about them."

Sounds like a guy I'd like to know. Also loved the quote about him being like a college student with 60 years of experience.

perfunctory• 13 years ago

This must be the worst news website in terms of usability

lucb1e• 13 years ago

Offtopic: One day we're going to look back at websites like these and laugh. There is distracting, moving content to the right and to the bottom. And technically also to the left since it moves when you scroll. Share buttons to the left, right, top and bottom. Advertisements for other articles that you totally should read on the top, right, bottom, and semi-embedded in the article. The only thing missing is bolded "RELATED" headlines of other articles embedded in the post, like most other news websites nowadays have.

This is getting out of hand if you ask me. The hitcounters of the nineties that another HN submission talked about a few days ago were nothing compared to this.

Livermore scientist still reinventing the wheel at 94

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