Hacker News Reader

Comment by roydivision | Hacker News Reader

I have, and least power. I worked in a DC with 4 very large diesel generators, each backed up by a multi-ton flywheel that managed the transition between a power cut and the generators taking over.

Area wide power cut, winter afternoon so it was already getting dark. The two signs I knew there was something wrong were that all the lights went out outside, ie other businesses, street lighting etc. And my internet connection stopped working. Nothing else in the DC was affected. Even the elevator was working.

View on HN

Amazing story, and now the flywheel is living rent free in a steampunk-inspired corner of my brain. What are these called so I can look them up on the net? Like this maybe?

https://www.torus.co/torus-flywheel

They're chonky devices which were not really off-the-shelf until the last decade, as far as I know. There's very few images of them, but a smaller one looks like this: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/03/14/pilot-project-for-fly...

Very cool. Somehow I missed the idea of flywheels used to store energy. I assumed one that small would peter out in seconds.

These were huge. In fact iirc the power that came into the building spun them, and the DC ran off the resultant generated electricity. So the risk at cutover is minimal, there is in fact no loss of electricity unless the wheel drops below the required revs.

One of these units blew at one point. We had 4 and only needed two running, so no big deal. The company who managed the whole thing (Swiss) came to replace it. Amazing job, they had to put it on small rollers, like industrial roller skates, then embed hooks in the walls at each corridor junction, and slowly winch the thing along, it was like watching the minute hand of a clock.

Then the whole process in reverse to bring in the new one. Was fascinating to watch. The guy in charge was a giant, built like a brick outhouse. They knew their stuff.

Much smaller-scale, but I worked at a company with a mini-mainframe-type computer (VAX-11/780, iirc) that had a 'motor-generator' to run it (really a motor-flywheel-generator).

The computer, storage, etc. ran off the generator, which first eliminated any risk of power spikes and surges (as the flywheel is a very effective low-pass filter), and the circuits controlling motor speed also ensured the AC frequency was better than the power company supply. This was located in a rural area, so the long power lines with few sinks (customers pulling power) made lightening spike risk spread further, and the rural voltage and frequency fluctuated a lot. Seemed like a really cool system that worked flawlessly in the years I was there.

I'm realising, with my limited understanding of electronics, that the flywheel acts in these cases as a capacitor, albeit a frickin' huge mechanical one.

Elegant! Flywheel as line conditioner. Most cool.

That whole story is clutch. Thanks a ton.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com