Comment by internaut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by internaut | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gray's Velkess project was a superior idea to Tesla's Powerwall (IMO!).

It is now unfortunately defunct or at least the website says they're on hold indefinitely.

Here is a youtube video explaining:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6I2lKtfpLQ

It was a flywheel battery. A physical battery. It turns electrical energy into kinetic energy (and back on demand) at a very high efficiency rate. If I remember the specs correctly it could supply 15 kwh. I think the cost for first adopters would have been $6500 a unit. Actually here are the full specs from a sheet I got from the website before it went down:

    Technical Specifcations
    Continuous Power               3kW
    Peak Power (60 seconds)        9kW
    Nameplate Energy               15kWh
    Depth of Discharge             100%
    Interface                      48VDC Virtual Lead Acid Bus
    24h Roundtrip Efciency         >80%
    Expected Service Life          10 years
    Physical Package meter(inch)   1 x 1 x 1 (40 x 40 x 40)
    Weight kg(lbs)                 340 (750)
    Standard Connectivity          Wi-Fi, Ethernet
    Optional Connectivity          CAN Bus, RS-485, Xbee, Powerline, LoRa

    Energy storage systems of any size can be built by linking 2 or more (n) Velkess L systems togetherin parallel. 
    Multiple parallel Velkess L modules will self balance and behave as a single energy storage system with performance equal to (1 module) * n.

The clever part was that the flywheel (flywheels are dangerous due to the large amount of kinetic energy) would employ a lasso effect to crumple and use its own energy to destroy itself if there was a technical problem.

The killer app quality it had was that a flywheel of this sort could theoretically run for many decades without failure. The first iteration had '10 years' expected service life but I believe that was being very conservative and it had the capability to last much, much longer.

Do you have any links, more information about the 'lasso effect' ?

It turns out their website is now live (it wasn't the previous time I checked) and appears open for business.

Since it's up I'll just directly quote from the horse's mouth:

"Velkess’s flywheel was conceived from the very beginning up to provide dramatically lower cost for performance. To do this we had to take a fundamentals approach, re-imagining the flywheel from the ground up.

Flexible vs. Rigid

Traditional flywheels are designed and built like the turbines of high performance jet engines. They use super rigid materials and super high precision fabrication to very tightly control the powerful natural dynamics that are characteristic of all high energy spinning rotors. These materials, precision, and control techniques are all very expensive, so you simply can’t use the traditional rigid approach to make a low cost system.

Velkess’s flywheel is flexible and works very much like a cowboy’s lasso. Our flexible system embraces the natural dynamics of the rotor, redirecting any stray energies into stabilizing counter forces. By working cooperatively with these natural rotor dynamics we gain excellent control of the rotor system without having to crush out its irregularities. Because of this we can use much less expensive materials and don’t need nearly as much precision as rigid designs."

http://www.velkess.com/technology/

One day I hope to build a microhydro plant and having one of these would be great.

> It is now unfortunately defunct or at least the website says they're on hold indefinitely.

> It turns out their website is now live (it wasn't the previous time I checked) and appears open for business.

So in the 1 hour between your first and second comments, they brought the site back online and started taking orders? You understand how that might be hard for people to believe right?

Instead of trying to imply that he's a liar you could just visit the site and find out for yourself that he was right the first time around.

http://www.velkess.com/

The website underwent a redesign in the last year or two.

When I went back to revisit it maybe a year ago you only got a landing page stating the project was finished or on hold.

Then I googled some information and found the rest of the site was accessible as part of the redesign, which gave me the impression they were up and running. However I was right the first time as the other chap pointed out, the home page still says they're on hold.

very interesting. They even had a kickstarter page at some point? What happened to them? Concept didn't work?

Take this with a pinch of salt because my memory might not be reliable.

I haven't seen it working with my own eyes but I believe the concept did work, was prototyped and some were produced for the two usecases 'A' and 'L' they mention.

However then in the last year or so the price of oil dropped and I think this either spooked Gray and/or the investors. I think they were at least partially refunded and the project was put on the backburner.

I am not an engineer but surely this is essentially a battery and its utility should be independent of any rises or dips in the price of energy?

To give one example, there is a lot of people in rural communities who aren't on the grid e.g. Tiny House or RV communities.

For most of those people, it is a choice between using natural gas and/or solar. A lot of them power fridges and airconditioning equipment using gas. Others use solar/wind and lead acid batteries to power their appliances.

One of Velkess's products is aimed at being a drop-in replacement for lead acid batteries.

So; the causality is that low oil/gas prices damage demand for solar/wind, which then indirectly affects people choosing to pay for lead-acid battery setups or a product like this flywheel.

Personally I believe this would be way overthinking the market. This is a problem with analytical people sometimes.

I think lots of people will purchase a flywheel battery merely because it is cool and different. I would purchase one partly for that reason, and because I believe a flywheel would (or has the potential to) last much longer than the alternatives.

I also think a lot of greenie-weenies are uncomfortable with using lead-acid batteries for their storage as part of the renewable energy paradigm they prefer. There are health risks associated with them also, which environmentalists are going to be particularly paranoid about.

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