Solar power during a power cut - could this work?

[bernardgreen]

In the 1950s and 60s, flywheels were used on buses in Switzerland, but they were heavy, prone to explosive failure and had no way of compensating for the angular momentum that made turning difficult. Composites have played a large part in solving these issues

Look up Gyrobus on Google for more info

 

[ban-all-sheds]

The people who are into serious downhill "kart" racing use flywheels for braking, as that way they don't throw away the kinetic energy they've acquired.

I heard that someone was using kinetic energy.

http://www.williamsf1.com/advancede...ace-to-the-future-with-f1-derived-technology/

They're also experimenting in Scotland with a 1.2MWh battery:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/09/gigha-watts-scottish-island-energy-wind-turbines

The Wikipedia article linked from that page has a link to a 5MW/10MWh one in China.

 

[SimonH2]

If you're looking at kinetic storage, JET uses two large flywheels as the grid (then the CEGB ?) wouldn't allow them to draw the very large pulses of power needed to generate the toroidal field.

 

[bernardgreen]

Very large fly wheel storage systems have to take the rotation of the earth into account as this will cause a gyro to precess. This can create a lot of force on the bearings. Only if the axis of the gyro is parallel to the axis of the earth's rotation will there be no ( or negligible precessive ) forces,.

There is a 50 minute lecture about gyros and precession effect at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLy0IQT8ssk

if you are really interested and can cope with a lot of theory.