The Mechanical Battery 

Little known fact - Kevin Costner bomb "Waterworld" was meant to actually save the world. The plan was to channel Kostner's profits to his brother, Dan, who ran US Flywheels. This company was working on a flywheel that stored useful amount of power in a carbon fiber flywheel rotating on permanent magnet bearings in a vacuum. The spec was to develop such a flywheel that could reach speeds of around 100,000 RPM. When the movie bombed, the investment was, alas, lost. The company folded decades ago.

We have two of these at work. They are rotary UPSs. They are spun up with power from the grid. They are constantly spinning at 1800 rpm. Connected to generators, automatic transfer switches will switch to them whenever we loose the grid. It will provide 1.5 MW of power for 15 seconds. When grid power is lost not only do they provide power long enough for diesel generators to fire up but they clutch start their own diesel generators to keep them spinning. No batteries needed!

Imagine if this gets implemented in the automotive world, and after a car accident and the enclosure is broken the flywheel is sent 8km down the road

This is very educational. It says everything it needs in terms of engineering, and still also makes sense to non-technical people. What appeals to me most is that flywheels, due to their inertia, are able to bridge gaps in power with low sudden changes, so that systems have time to adapt if need be.

I love this video. I don't know about anyone else but for the longest time I've had a sort of obsession with fly wheels. I always knew how useful they could be. I never thought to think how there could be such a science to this and how much effort has and will be put into flywheels. This video almost makes me feel complete lol so weird how a video could make me feel so justified in my feelings for the most random of things.

Glad to finally see some coverage of this idea. I like the idea of flywheels that clutch in while breaking and then release it back to the tire when accelerating.

I wouldn’t think that using a flywheel energy storage system would be very safe in a moving vehicle, one accident could be catastrophic. But using it in conjunction with solar panels for a house could be quite useful for night time power use.

I was nearby a flywheel energy storage research and manufacturing building when one of them catastrophically failed causing a mechanical explosion that shot tons of twisted metal in all directions. Some of the metal fell through the ceiling where I was working. Luckily nobody was hurt. Any kind of mass energy storage will have issues like this however. Releasing tons of energy all at once is dangerous no matter what the technology is.

When I did my work experience at IBM, they had flywheel UPS systems. I suspect you could also use them as surge protectors. And I reckon gasworks regulated supply pressure (gravity battery) It was the early 90s.

I was always fascinated with old movie projectors in grade school (70's). There was a mechanism that you could turn with your fingers that once it was rotating, would keep going for a long time. I suspect it utilized a flywheel and reduction gearing to store the energy. Imagine a smaller flywheel coupled to a larger slower flywheel with gearing that would convert the much higher torque from a massive slower flywheel into faster RPM with less torque generator.

i dont know how long its been since I've been drawn to the content made by a single channel. absolutely amazing content!

What a marvelously informative and thorough video. Many people don't tell the audience the complete detail. You do and thank you for that.

One of the physicists who worked at Culham fusion project in the UK ended up working closely with me for a couple of years. He told me a funny story about that flywheel. Apparently he was asked to calculate what would happen if the flywheel managed to get free from it's mount. He calculated that simply nothing would stop it until it got to the north sea... That's a long way through fairly densely populated land. He was then asked to calculate the impact of a departure should the flywheel be mounted so that it span in the horizontal plane. That was even worse because all of the energy would be converted to heat and kinetic motion in one place. Essentially it would be like a large bomb. Nothing bad ever happened.

I didn't hear it mentioned, but we do actually have a ginormous flywheel energy storage system in form of the rotating mass in the electric network, both the generators and the motors. This is not usually apparent, but powerplants do rely on this during switchover etc. and locally dealing with high inertia motors and variable frequency drives they can keep the dc bus energized as long as they spin.

Mechanical storage looks like it could make solar and wind power a LOT more practical!

Thank you for this video. I remember seeing a video right here on TRvid about a company making flywheel storage that powered up a flywheel during low power demand periods and then generating power when power demand was high. It claimed low cost, near zero maintenance, and the flywheel could spin virtually forever. It used a flywheel in an enclosure with a near vacuum inside.

Great video! If multi-cell kinetic batteries could be designed on a nano-scale then their energy density would be sufficient to replace chemical batteries in all portable devices and vehicles.

Came up with a fly wheel design a decade ago using a hollow torus made of a "Y.B.C.O." ceramic with a track in the inner ring, the ceramic acts as a super conductor at temps below 90k. Liquid nitrogen, which is pumped through the hollow torus, boils at 75k so turns the structure into a superconductor holding ring. Within the track you have 'spokes' of rare earth bar magnets that are mounted on a central axis so they polarity of the extremes of the spokes are all the same. In theory with the meinser effect the spokes are suspended in place with zero surface friction. Capping the torus and making the internal area a vacum would remove the air friction allowing the magnetic spokes to rotate indeffinetly so long as liquid nitrogen is supplied into the torus hollow. Alligning bar magnets externally perpendicular to the spokes so that they attract the spokes as they approach and repel them as they pass would keep the spokes spinning and perhaps even accelerate them. Finally encase that rotating magnetic field within a ball of coiled copper to generate electric current at the cost of liquid nitrogen which is apparently equivalent in cost to milk.

Very interesting. I wonder if the ULTRA-CAPACITOR with similar self-discharge properties might not be a more suitable short-term, high discharge rate storage system for some of the flywheel storage applications cited in this well presented video.

Really nice introduction to a topic most of us are not familiar with. Seems one of the best technologies for grid storage.

An excellent video. Well researched AMD presented in simple terms. I hope you follow it up with updates on the technology and daily uses as developments occur

Excellent informative documentary. There was a historical flywheel technology not mentioned because it was not for mechanical storage but nonetheless advanced the technical ability to build high energy flywheels. These were for the stabilization of ships at sea to dampen the rolling motion for the comfort of the passengers. They were also used in strategic ballistic missile submarines to stabilize the firing platform.

The flywheel effect is also used in hammer mills and press brakes to accumulate force before impacting the material.

Pumped hydro storage, especially closed loop examples, are worth consideration for a future episode. Lots of working examples, scalable to multi-gigawatt

Flywheel energy storage was my school science project back in 1975. I was inspired by a magazine article describing a bus under test at the time that used a high speed flywheel in a vacuum. That article contained the first mention I recall seeing this strange material called carbon fiber. I was very nearly injured when a bicycle wheel bearing I was using in my project failed.

Somewhere around 20 years ago, maybe 30, I saw a car that had a dozen small flywheels, all gimballed. Each unit was about 2 litres volume. They fit into the standard engine space, along with the electric traction motor. This solution seems possible, small units that are easy and cheap to make and install. It gets past the gyro problems of planetary rotation and turning, climbing hills etc.

Fly wheels are good for short durations before something else takes over, thus enhancing grid stability for example. But using a large shaft, like a mine shaft and lowering/lifting very heavy weights are much better because there's no loss in stored energy even if it's stored for days.

Nicely done and well researched! My only comment is that if we are considering short term power storage as a good application for flywheels, shouldn't we bring capacitors into the conversation?

I did a high school science project on this topic back in the early 70s. I used a six inch diameter, 3/4 inch thick solid steel flywheel spun up by a vacuum cleaner motor. With only the shut down vacuum motor as a load, it would continue to spin in excess of twenty minutes.

Hands down the best informative video on flywheels for newbies! Thank you!

Until your video I really hadn't thought that flywheel storage had a place in the future but now I see some good advantages for static systems, thank you.

Thanks for that explanation. VW announced that they build charging stations with that principle to be able to get higher charging speeds out of low charging speed environments. They didnt really explained how that works so thank you for doing that 🙂👌🏻

I really like this concept. I hope this gets developed soon.

Kind of reminds me of the old wind up toy cars I used to play with as a kid. I remember thinking it would be "neat" to have a real car that could operate more or less using the same principles but imagined that such a car couldn't exist since it wouldn't go very far without being wound up or recharged again. However with what was just describe it doesn't seem as far fetched as I first thought.

Hey, at 5:58, you mentioned that the voltage of an AC machine suffers at lower shaft RPMs. I'd argue the output frequency is affected more so, since the number of coils on an AC motor or generator typically greatly outweigh the rate of flux movement. The output frequency is directly proportional to its speed though

Strikes me that flywheel batteries are a much better answer to stationery energy storage systems than even Elon Musk’s powerwalls. . . Excellent videos, sir. I’ve subscribed, and hit the bell!

Great, video about my favourite energy storage system! We need more videos like that, it's such a shame that people are talking only about chemical baterries... :/

Subscribed. What a thoroughly entertaining and educational experience, thank you for your hard work *smiles* The presentation of the content was top notch, and extremely informative. Thank you for making this, I look forward to watching all of your content, and again just want to say thank you for this. Concise but thorough information combined with visual explanations/examples alongside your narration made this video into something special. I would gladly share it with younger people getting into STEM as an example of how exciting sciencetechengineeringmath can be, alongside it being an easy-to-understand presentation of concept-to-reality elements. Again, my deepest thanks and gratitude for your hard work giving us such a fun and educational video. Your editing and presentation are top tier, the animations were perfectly demonstrative, and the narration had no superfluous moments of self-indulgence; everything worked together as a very functional presentation of pertinent information. I could share this video with a classroom of nearly any age group and they would enjoy it and come away with a trove of forward-moving concepts and possibilities for the future. Thank you again, heh and thanks to anyone who read this long-winded comment, it's very early in the morning where I am but few things get me as excited as STEM content, especially when presented in such a delicious manner. Best wishes to you, thank you again for your research, hard work, and presentation. :) I look forward to browsing your channel thoroughly, and sharing it with students as they grow into our future foundations of intellect. Thinking of "anything" and applying that imagination's experiments will help all of humanity to jump the fences that cage our reality, furthering the exploration of all aspects of existence towards fulfillment and exploration of "possibility." Gosh how I love the joy of experimentation in science, how it takes just ONE thought to jump a fence into a new pasture of concepts... and once that single jump opens up the gate, we all flood into it and experience a beautiful new place filled with purpose and possibility, lol then we finally hit another fence, and the cycle continues. I love how we'll all stand on the fence boundary and observe everything we can about those new fields, how we'll examine everything we can see from this perspective... and after generation after generation of observers, someone will think outside the paradigm just enough to open a gate into this new field, and from there everyone can flood into it and personal expertise will digest every aspect of it, revel in it. We'll learn everything we can about it, and it'll be a beautiful thing. *smiles* And again one more fence, one more opportunity to gaze at the unknown, and one more breach to be hazarded against common sense and the mysteries of those unknowns. Cycle continues, we learn more and more that we know nothing at all but the pure joy of science lies in documenting what is and what can be, and that springboard of possibilities drives us into the beautiful unknown future of reality. Babbling :D

Very good video! Clear explanations and great build up of the concepts!

Very interesting thank you the lesson. Always thought mechanical energy storage could be an answer. I have my own idea on this subject. I have a home energy storage system idea based on integrating mechanical storage. There are so many simple alternatives to what we do now.

Thanks for this video - it seems that global industry and manufacturers are beginning to realise the great virtues of flywheels. About 10 years ago I was basing my university level student projects on the development of a Flywheel Energy Storage System (FESS) for use in the third world. My brief was that it must require minimal maintenance, it must have high energy density, it should be used for decades - even centuries - with no loss of storage capacity or efficiency, it must be totally sustainable, require only abundant and cheap materials and totally un-toxic to the planet - a challenging brief which only FESS designs or mechanical gravity based designs come anywhere close to fulfilling. Over several years of development, we decided that it was much better to go for low angular velocity (

Well done presentation, but the biggest problem if you ask me is the fact it is a mechanical and inverse system. I see useful applications for short term standby applications as you indicated for grid equalization, but not for vehicles or extended power storage.

Another type of mechanical energy storage that is interesting are big towers that have heavy hanging weights that are lifted by surplus energy and are lowered to produce energy. A lot like old cuckoo clocks. They don't require expensive control systems or cryogenic cooling or magnetic bearings.

Totally agree with your last line, this tech will grow and change. I can imagine a flywheel storage system used on a space station, or energy platform in space, the only bearing loss would be due to gyroscopic correction due to a low to no gravity environment, and would not need a pressure vessel to maintain a vacuum. A guarded high speed flywheel with enough mass could potentially provide stored enough power for all kinds of uses in space, or anywhere really. It’s interesting to hear that this is used in power grids already, that I did not know.

I forget the name of the dam but there is one in Australia that Richard Hammond checks out and it has the biggest most impressive series of flywheels I've ever seen, powered by water (obviously) being shot into cupped metal scoops on a ring. It's very very dope.

An interesting use of flywheel to store energy in motorsport is the KERS(kinetic energy recovery system)of the Nissan GTR LM. It was planned to have a flywheel that would spin at 60000rpm(47000G of acceleration for the outer edge of the flywheel) encased in a vacuum chamber, it is connected to an epicyclic gearbox which is then connected to the rear wheels. During braking it would spin up, and deliver 700 horsepower when needed. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_GT-R_LM_Nismo

The recent discovery of a room temperature super conductor should be a game changer for flywheels. Assuming that the very high pressure required does not add too much weight. I wonder if putting the superconductor in the flywheel itself could mitigate this?

Makes me wonder what a graphene based fly wheel would be like. Good video.

As a kid I read a (russian) book "In search of energy capsule" by Nurbej Vladimirovich Gulia. He used first principle approach to energy storage. Most of this book was about flywheels. It had a great impression on me. There is 2013 reprint with ISBN: 5-93196-591-2

QUESTION. Could Flywheels be adapted to work with micro hydro applications? Using water pressure to spin up a flywheel that has pelton cups on it? The idea is similar to a pottery wheel where you don't have to kick the wheel all the time, just every so often to keep speed. I would think if you go a flywheel going and then piped in water, even lower pressured water, the "kicking" would keep the momentum of the wheel going.

This is so interesting! So basically the technology exists to where they can be used as capacitors but due to material technology constraints, we cannot use them for anything smaller than industrial/commercial applications. So the challenge is to make everyday energy usage more efficient, or to find better materials technology. I am excited for the future. It seems like the Earth is coming into a technological renaissance again with quantum computing and energy technology.

Wow. One of the most concise and informative videos on the Internet. Thanks!

Now I'm wondering, with the newly discovered flash creation method, what progress there has been in incorporating graphene into metal and composites. Steel and tungsten carbide contain carbon, but I'm wondering if graphene can be incorporated to supplement their physical properties. I expect it is being worked on.

Very interesting video, very well explaining modern usage of flywheels. Another old way of storing energy mechanically is the use of springs. Is this also researched?

The crankshaft converted linear motion to rotary. The flywheel reduced the effects of torque impulses.

Something that does not appear to be talked about much on youtube is mechanical energy in the form of clockwork storage. Such as using an electric motor or human operation to wind something with very high potential energy while connected to an electric motor. It's a neat way of storing energy and i've only found a few videos on youtube actually using this function, otherwise it's just mechanical to mechanical like a wind up toy, not using the stored mechanical energy to turn a generator shaft.

Another amazing video on a super interesting topic! Keep up the good work you will surely grow much more :)

The entire Paris telephone network has used a flywheel energy back-up. However, the possibly devastating effect of its failure meant that it had to be kept underground within a large block of concrete.

I always wondered if the rotating doors on the big buildings were producing energy.

I remember reading about flywheel powered buses in Popular Science back in the seventies. I thought it sounded like a great idea.

Wow! 10 hours of spin for the flywheel at idle! Imagine how much better it would have been if they vacuum-sealed the flywheel's chamber instead of filling with H2!

I had never heard of a gyro on a bus, but this video sparks some thoughts. First off, what effects the gyro would have on the bus itself, I presume since the flywheel was vertical, it shouldnt have affected steering much, but what about tipping, I would sure think that it would have stabilized the bus from tipping? Does it have less roll while turning? Another thought was - maybe a direct coupling with a clutch through a transmission? Or would the losses through gearing be more than that of a motor/generator and traction motor? Your thoughts?

For flywheel batteries to store a lot of power would require a huge amount of mass I assume, wouldn't that extra weight cancel out any advantage?

The M1 series MBT the Abrams use two, maybe three gyroscopes to give it the ability to lock on a target and fire while on the move over most any terrain. At least it happens so fast you wont realize you were vaporized by a sabot round going a mile a second. Now antitank wespons use gyroscopes to hit armor from the top at its weak point.

The flywheel speed is effectively a non-issue if you use a regulated system such as a flyball governor. These systems exist specifically to enable enably flywheel storage across a wide range of energies and keep them operating at a very narrow powerband. Virtually all of the issues you mentioned would be completely solved with sufficient flyball mass and tuning.

New Mind. You always explain these topics in the best way. Thank you. Hope more subscribers find you. You deserve it.

Incredibly interesting. Thank you for the share, research and much effort in research in assembling this video.

What if every household had a flywheel - garbage can sized capacitor in the basement of every house? The capacitors could be linked together to capture lightning strikes that happen to towers on a mountain or something.

The spinning mechanical battery in a bus or other vehicle is essentially a gyroscope, and a massive one at that. Spinning at speed over the course of several hours (from charge to charge) should eventually cause the vehicle to list as the earth rotates. It's the same principle that keeps the earth's axis always pointed towards Polaris as it orbits the sun. It wants to keep its axis aligned to whatever direction it had when it started spinning, but a rotating Earth will keep reorienting the vehicle.

Another BIG advantage is flywheels can run on either AC or DC thus eliminating efficiency losses in converting between them :)

Excellent video! Really impressed with the quality of your content and happy to be a new subscriber! 👍

Once we have high temperature superconductors and high strength/weight graphene flywheels these designs will be able to exceed the energy density of chemical batteries for much less running cost. Exciting stuff!

Very nice. Besides mechanical batteries, a good topic is the exploitation of the natural batteries in our ecosystem, such as lakes or rivers. Brazil uses these widely.

You mentioned the NASA flywheel system. I think it's worth mentioning the other space use for flywheels, reaction control. Using flywheels for energy storage in space or other low friction environments must present it's own set of challenges. Perhaps solved by symmetric configurations for example.

Back in the 1970s Accuray (now ABB) used 400hz power for a process control system called 1180s. To get 400hz we had a motor generator that ran at 3600 RPM and make 400hz out the other side. It would survive momentary power dips due to the rotating mass.

Although I've known about the application of inertial and potential physics since I was a kid, or more accurately I've known of the existence of this branch of science, I am impressed at how refined and varied the apps have been developed to, with emphasis on how a lot of these innovations outlined here, which I have only recently become aware of, have actually been designed a long time ago, becoming more effective as chemical / engineering over time picked away at "friction / resistance" bit by bit...(I wonder if the police are aware of the magnitude and persistence of some of these machines "Resisting Arrest"?) I imagine that these mechanical, or as I like to call them - Inertial Batteries, could make a major role and innovation increase, if and when human industry manages to move and base itself into deep space, such as the outer solar system at least...or hopefully beyond. Super low temperatures within a degree or 2 of zero Kelvin, the vacuum of space and practically Zero gravity, seems to me to be a perfect environment for this, and one where it would certainly be needed to assist any people who may be living and working in space. A fascinating, and exciting topic. Great video. Much thanks.

There were a few launching roller coasters that used a flywheel energy storage system. The coaster was launched using a cable and winch. The winch would clutch to a spinning flywheel and start the launch.

Thank you for this very educational video. For my home, I plan on geothermal energy coupled to a flywheel for all my electrical needs. This is my vision for the future.

I worked on one of these years ago but I could never breed the hamsters big enough or build the flywheel small enough to be effective.

I like the flywheel. Build the batteries into the flywheel (CC). For vehicles, e=m*v². A "giant pedulum clock generator" with some hundred or thousand tons of weight could also store large amounts of energy anywhere with highly dynamic availability. Solar raw heat could be used to lift the water by evaporation after first use of the steam. Just let it condense at desired height.

I've always wanted to build a tricycle that used a combination of flywheel energy storage and an infinitely variable transmission

There is a magnetic bearing type that in theory combines the best of passive and active magnetic bearings called electrodynamic bearing, that uses a special configuration of permanent magnets and copper to stabilize itself through eddy currents. Here is a link to a demonstration video: trvid.com/video/video-2R4QQmCY4JU.html Here is a short Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_bearing#Future_advances Thesis on the theory/company site: www.magnetal.se/TechnologyPhD.html

Combined with chem storage, a power manager could coordinate 3 sources (chem, FES, grid) to smooth out renewable energy grid. This could be done at household level, all the way to municipal etc.

I think you should mention the century old technology of mechanical watches, they are the most common thing that uses this thing and still relevant and still in existence of you the present day. You should also talk about the Murphy's Law, which most mechanical thing suffers the most.

Awesome man so glad your still at it! Been busy with other things lately but when i get time i always look for one of your videos. If you keep this up i see no stopping you! To the Top my friend! Have you thought about doing a video introducing yourself? Or do you plan on staying in the shadows. Heck it’s worked for AvE! Lol it almost turns into its own thing. Just wanted to stop by and say hi

Flywheel generators are widely used for short-term emergency power up to about one minute when emergency diesel generators have ramped up. They keep operation-theatre-lights from flickering and servercenters from crashing. Also, turbines in classical powerplants are huge rotating masses that slowly bleed off energy and are sometimes used to power emergency systems. Only those things are not super-efficient and you can't really use them in vehicles. Otherwise its a well-proven and used technology.

They've got these huge flywheel batteries at the data centre which stores the server "cloud" that the organisation I work at host with. Basically in the situation of a power outage, these flywheel batteries kick in instantly to provide power. However the data centre uses so much power that it'll be drained completely in about a minute or less. It provides enough power just to give the diesel generators enough time to start up and provide backup power. I wish I can use a small version of these at home as battery storage but I think they only come at high capacities.

i did not even know something like this even existed before this video thank you for sharing this kind of information with us.

Wouldn't this work far better in space, say 10 to 100 times better, with limited micro gravity! Once spinning it should not stop over time, unless all the energy drained from it. But once it is spinning it will always be there if not used!

Thanks! Finally I know how modern cars use energy from braking. I always wondered about that!

I'm intrigued by the concept but I'll stick to my Aluminum batteries thank you very much. I'm not dismissive of the Fly Wheel, it has a place in energy storage but I don't think mechanical batteries is the philosophers stone one size fits all solution. I envision a divers options of energy production and storage from Coal to the Atom, from Lithium to the Fly Wheel all working together.

I recall hearing, many years ago, that the French telephone system used spinning devices to store energy (kinetic) - I would suggest as a power failure standby back-up.

Another way of doing it is by having a pulley system in a tower. You have big weights that just get hoisted up by a generator motor when the power is on, then when it’s off, discharge the weight and let it sink to the ground, or further if you want. I’m not sure which is better, more reliable, more efficient, etc. but it’s another way you could do it.

Did they consider a gyroscope effect - the Coriolis force? If the flywheel of significant mass rotates rapidly, a significant Coriolis force makes the vehicle jump at turns.

Excellent article - really informative. Many thanks.

This system has been used in the 60`s and 70`s in mechanical watches but were replaced by the invention of quartz but you must give it a nudge at least once a day!

12:48 So you actually used 1m as the radius of the flywheel in stead of 0.5m to calculate the Mach number (at see lvl) of the outer surface. So the Mach number should be around 5.5. That's still fast though.

How do the velocities within the flywheel affect its orbital mechanics?

I think you could increase the efficiency of an electric vehicle by turning the weight of battery into momentum, by spinning battery

Thank you so much and was a very good episode never looked at the flywheel like that how could anybody give this a thumbs down so well put together some people have no respect