Have a look at this if your in to Wind applications...

[ren]

Flywheel storage


Interesting concept. Can anyone elaborate on this? Or does anyone have more information?

[rickoff]

Reply to Ren:

Hi Ren,

I became very interested in wind power generation 25 to 30 years ago and experimented with several different model designs. Most of them worked great, and the only thing holding me back from completing an entire full scale system was the storage problem - mainly the expense of all the batteries, inverters, etc. I was running my pipe organ rebuilding business at the time, and so I made it around to quite a few churches. A popular addition to many of the older church buildings here in Maine was belltowers, and some of these also had large clocks installed, with faces on each of the four sided display near the top of the tower. At one such church where I was doing a rebuild and tuning, the acting minister was a retired clockmaker, and he had been working up in the tower to repair the clock mechanism, which had stopped working several years prior. He took me up in the tower to show me what he had been doing, and to see if I could help to overcome some problems he had run into. As I stood within the clock framing near the top of the high tower, and gazed at the gearing, cogs, pulleys, chains, and weights, a large rush of wind came upon the tower. In that instant, it dawned upon me that a clock-like mechanism could be used to store energy supplied by a windmill. No batteries needed! The clock is operated by a series of weights, which are normally hoisted by hand power, as in a grandfather's clock. The speed of the various clock mechanism gears is dependent upon the total of the hoisted weights, the length of the pendulum swing, and the governance of the escape mechanism which controls the fall rate of the weights. Thus, with the proper amount of weights hoisted, and a sufficient gear speed selected, a large 120V or 240V Induction motor (used as a generator to provide household electric power) could be driven at a constant speed by the energy stored in the slowly falling weights. Instead of pulling on chains to lift the weights, though, direct wind power could provide the lifting force. For example, suppose that the wind mill is capable of easily hoisting a 5.2 lb weight to the top of a 20 foot tower in a 5 mph wind. When that weight reaches the top, it would latch up but also trip a mechanism to begin hoisting a second 5.2 lb weight, and so on, until 5 such weights had reached the top. At this point, another mechanism would trigger that would let all 5 weights fall to the bottom while hoisting a 26 lb weight upward. The process would continue until 5 of the 26 pound weights had been hoisted. These would then fall to hoist one of two 125 lb weights. So now you have a system that is continuously performing work in any fair amount of wind, while nicely storing all of the energy mechanically. To start the generator, you simply flip a lever that allows the escapement governance device to begin the gear driven rotation of the generator at your desired speed. The slowly falling 125 lb weight would have no problem spinning the generator at a constant speed for a lengthy period of time, while the windmill continues to work on hoisting up the weights that will eventually lift the remaining 125 pound weight into place, and the entire process continues.

I actually built a small demo model not long after toying with the idea, and it worked great. I never got around to building a large scale unit, as I either didn't have the time or have the money to do so. I still think it's a great idea, and will probably put a unit together at my summer cottage now that I am retired. Of all the wind systems that I have seen over the years, I can not remember any that utilized stored mechanical energy rather than using battery banks. The flywheel device that you show here could also be an effective storage means, but probably quite expensive in comparison to my weight tower idea. The weight tower could easily be built from readily available parts at low expense. The weights could be water, sand, or cement-filled, capped PVC pipe sections.

If anyone is interested in further details, let me know. I no longer have the model handy that I made all those years ago, as I had it stored inside one church that eventually burned to the ground. The workings are still there in my mind, though, and if I get a little time on my hands I will post a diagram of the basics if people are interested. Some can probably figure it out already from what I said above.

Just some friendly suggestions from the man in Maine,

Rick

[ren]

Hi Ren,

I became very interested in wind power generation 25 to 30 years ago and experimented with several different model designs. Most of them worked great, and the only thing holding me back from completing an entire full scale system was the storage problem - mainly the expense of all the batteries, inverters, etc. I was running my pipe organ rebuilding business at the time, and so I made it around to quite a few churches. A popular addition to many of the older church buildings here in Maine was belltowers, and some of these also had large clocks installed, with faces on each of the four sided display near the top of the tower. At one such church where I was doing a rebuild and tuning, the acting minister was a retired clockmaker, and he had been working up in the tower to repair the clock mechanism, which had stopped working several years prior. He took me up in the tower to show me what he had been doing, and to see if I could help to overcome some problems he had run into. As I stood within the clock framing near the top of the high tower, and gazed at the gearing, cogs, pulleys, chains, and weights, a large rush of wind came upon the tower. In that instant, it dawned upon me that a clock-like mechanism could be used to store energy supplied by a windmill. No batteries needed! The clock is operated by a series of weights, which are normally hoisted by hand power, as in a grandfather's clock. The speed of the various clock mechanism gears is dependent upon the total of the hoisted weights, the length of the pendulum swing, and the governance of the escape mechanism which controls the fall rate of the weights. Thus, with the proper amount of weights hoisted, and a sufficient gear speed selected, a large 120V or 240V Induction motor (used as a generator to provide household electric power) could be driven at a constant speed by the energy stored in the slowly falling weights. Instead of pulling on chains to lift the weights, though, direct wind power could provide the lifting force. For example, suppose that the wind mill is capable of easily hoisting a 5.2 lb weight to the top of a 20 foot tower in a 5 mph wind. When that weight reaches the top, it would latch up but also trip a mechanism to begin hoisting a second 5.2 lb weight, and so on, until 5 such weights had reached the top. At this point, another mechanism would trigger that would let all 5 weights fall to the bottom while hoisting a 26 lb weight upward. The process would continue until 5 of the 26 pound weights had been hoisted. These would then fall to hoist one of two 125 lb weights. So now you have a system that is continuously performing work in any fair amount of wind, while nicely storing all of the energy mechanically. To start the generator, you simply flip a lever that allows the escapement governance device to begin the gear driven rotation of the generator at your desired speed. The slowly falling 125 lb weight would have no problem spinning the generator at a constant speed for a lengthy period of time, while the windmill continues to work on hoisting up the weights that will eventually lift the remaining 125 pound weight into place, and the entire process continues.

I actually built a small demo model not long after toying with the idea, and it worked great. I never got around to building a large scale unit, as I either didn't have the time or have the money to do so. I still think it's a great idea, and will probably put a unit together at my summer cottage now that I am retired. Off all the wind systems that I have seen over the years, I can not remember any that utilized stored mechanical energy rather than using battery banks. The flywheel device that you show here could also be an effective storage means, but probably quite expensive in comparison to my weight tower idea. The weight tower could easily be built from readily available parts at low expense. The weights could be water, sand, or cement-filled, capped PVC pipe sections.

If anyone is interested in further details, let me know. I no longer have the model handy that I made all those years ago, as I had it stored inside one church that eventually burned to the ground. The workings are still there in my mind, though, and if I get a little time on my hands I will post a diagram of the basics if people are interested. Some can probably figure it out already from what I said above.

Just some friendly suggestions from the man in Maine,

Rick

Thanks Rick for your informative post. There is definately something in this I think. Stored mechanical energy in the flywheel, Watsons machine had a HUGE flywheel. I noticed that the device in the link I provided runs in a vacuum, probably to reduce friction. There are many mechanical devices that are worth further investigation, the pendulum being one of them.