On 7/27/17 6:45 PM, Eric Kuhnke wrote:
With a big flywheel setup, it might take up less space and cost less than a huge AGM battery plant, but you had better be *really* *confident* in the maintenance, load testing and quality of your generator... The ones I have seen are good for 30 to 60 seconds of load buffer, maximum, just enough time for a big diesel generator to start up and get slightly warmed up before the load transfers onto it.
The incident I'm recalling was the type where the flywheel, generator, and engine are linear on the same shaft. While the power is on it's a motor that maintains the flywheel. If the power goes out it becomes a generator just barely long enough for the engine to start. The fatal flaw IMO is that type can't cold start on the diesel engine. It needed batteries to "jumpstart" the flywheel, so you end up having the expensive flywheel system *and* a battery plant to cover all your bases.
~Seth
