>
>Okay...so how does a flywheel battery work in a vehicle?
>It seems to me that to be capable of storing any significant amount of
energy,
>this thing has to have a significant mass and very high speed (as you say,
>about 60k RPMs) This thing has just turned into a huge gyroscope. If it
were
>rigidly mounted in the car, the car would probably be unable to roll at all,
>and going over hills would be really fun. This seems to indicate some
type of
>gimbal system to allow the flywheel to stay in a single plain, no matter
what
>the vehicle is doing. So how do you get energy out of it if it doesn't
have a
>fixed rotor?
I believe they are gymbal mounted as you say, so that the car can change
direction without being affected by the flywheel. The flywheels I've seen
are usually a carbon-fiber composite to withstand the large forces involed.
The are run in a vacuum and ride on "levitating" magnetic bearings. The
show I saw ("Planet Nieghborhood" on PBS) didn't go into how they
store/extract engergy, but my educated guess would be that the flywheel
axle has magnets in it, making the flywheel part of a brushless a/c motor.
I just interupted this post to do a little web searching. Check this out:
http://www.llnl.gov/IPandC/op96/12/12c-ele.html
The flywheel is integrated with a "special ironless generator/motor".
Cool, huh?
-Karl
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