The penny has dropped completely now. Totally see it. "H." at QMUL is right but so am I.
Imagine we somehow get the brake heat back to the tank. The shell could be glowing red hot but if it doesn't have time to equilibrate the ****charge in the tank would be used up in the normal fashion like nothing happened****. Heat conduction is a 2D process. Potentially slow. Somehow getting that fraction of the brake back to the tank by COMPRESSION (a 3D process acting on all the gas) would be more efficient. Hence "H."s suggestion at QMUL that people use a SMALL regenerator tank to kick the next power demand. However... If the tank was ***space filled*** with an electric element (so large surface area) and glowed very hotly, most of the 'dead' k.e. *would* be returned to the tank very quickly before the next power demand... But electrical regenerative braking is not good at slow speeds and won't static brake. The best suggestion and they probably do it already is to lag the tank at the compressing plant. The area between the adiabatic line and the isothermal line (which the tank would drop to without lagging) is just wasted energy. Good fun. Back to TEC and other stuff I do.
