Comments on: World’s First Grid Scale Flywheel Energy Plant Opening Soon!

By: bobsomm

bobsomm — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:15:05 +0000

Van-Chuck, the article says it can store 20 MWatts which can be fed back for 15 minutes. That is 5 MW Hours.

By: van-chuck

van-chuck — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:33:12 +0000

The numbers and units in this article are confusing.

Watts are a measure of power (the rate of flow)
Watt-hours are a measure of energy (the sum of flows)

Since we’re talking about energy storage, the units should be measuring the total (sum) amount of energy, not instantaneous power. The article references “20 megawatts of energy storage”, but “20 megawatts” refers to a rate, and therefore doesn’t make any sense when talking about storage capacity.

It should be “20 megawatt-hours” if this is describing its storage capacity. If it is referring to its maximum instantaneous output then 20MW would make sense, however that would be a relatively meaningless metric since it doesn’t speak to the capacity (although using the 15 minute figure it could be calculated to be 300MWh).

In full defense of Inhabitat, both the source article and original press release use the same units and are therefore just as confusing (or incorrect).

By: archonic

archonic — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:19:51 +0000

\”estimates that it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to 82 per cent over its 20-year life\”

Up to 82% over what!?!? Fly wheels have been done at utility scale before, and failed.

By: MrScottFletcher

MrScottFletcher — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:31:05 +0000

Pretty impressive, though 20 megawatts is less than one percent of the 2.1 gigawatts required to send Marty back in time.

By: lukep

lukep — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 01:36:21 +0000

AWESOME green tech. Makes even Solar look like a corporate polluter!

By: mrsteve007

mrsteve007 — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:23:26 +0000

It’ll be interested to see how they do. I have two (now discontinued) beacon power PV inverters, and they haven’t exactly been the best in terms of support or reliability.