Design of a stabilised flywheel unit for efficient energy storage

摘要

Authors developed a unit with rotating flywheel for storing energy and thus suppressing the discrepancy between electricity supply and demand. The target of the development was to minimise the energy extracted from the flywheel for stabilisation of remaining all five free degrees of freedom. In the described proof-of-concept laboratory model, the levitation combines Maxwell (electromagnetic) and Lorentz (current in magnetic field) lifting forces. While the so far existing storage units spend on the stabilisation much larger power, in the authors' proof-of-concept design sufficed for the stabilisation only hundreds of milliwatts - not increasing significantly with increased flywheel size.