How NASA Reinvented the Mechanical Battery

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Energy storage is a fascinating topic, and hugely important to our energy transition on earth. However, sometimes inspiration and advancements comes from space! NASA is constantly pioneering technology we can use, from solar panels to batteries. This video covers how they reinvented mechanical flywheel energy storage with their vacuum chamber magnetic levitation mechanical battery.
Credits:
Producer & Presenter: Ryan Hughes
Research: Sian Buckley and Ryan Hughes
Video Editing: @aniokukade‬ and Ryan Hughes
Music and Sound Design: @aniokukade‬
#NASA #Battery #Energy #Engineering #Breakthrough

[@ZirothTech]

Upgrade your browsing experience today with Opera using my link opr.as/Opera-browser-zirothtech ! Quick clarification from the intro - flywheel cannot be used to control a satellites altitude (height as I call it), but just the attitude (orientation)

[@lylestavast7652]

spacex satellites use krypton gas positioning hall effect thrusters for that.

[@Poult100]

Glad you said that, because I was about to 😅

[@AndreAnyone]

KZbin real wants me to watch this video

[@paulstraszewski736]

Advertise a Chinese browser?

[@VeniceInventors]

Hi Ryan, at 0:10 you say that gyros are used to adjust the satellites height and orientation. But unless they jettison the gyro to get a little push, I don't see how it can change the altitude/course/location of the satellite, otherwise we'd have a gyroscopic propulsion device! Alex

[@Herbit-k4j]

Technically, no one can say that this technology isn’t revolutionary.

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

HAHA, nice pun! 🤣 (⬅There's even one built into this Emoji; think about it carefully! 😉) (They actually CAN say it, but then it wouldn't be true.)

[@adamhajimichael]

Sir, you won the internet for today

[@fentoncs]

The combo maybe. I did an undergrad paper on super flywheels for energy storage more than 50 years ago.

[@shmuelglick4774]

Ni Spun

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

@: Huhhh?

[@douro20]

Flywheels made of depleted uranium have also been used in energy storage and are used in the primary coolant pumps of nuclear power plants to ensure a long coastdown in the event of a power failure.

[@Yamyatos]

I didnt know this was a thing. A nuclear power plant having a power failure seems.. unintuitive.

[@kentonian]

@@Yamyatos Fukushima? 🤦‍♂️

[@mnomadvfx]

@@Yamyatos A nuclear power station needs a secondary power source unrelated to its own generation capability to maintain the coolant pumping action that stops the reactor core from overheating. This was a significant part of the Chernobyl disaster given that the 'safety test' they were attempting to run was in fact simulating a loss of power to the coolant pump and attempting to use the declining output of the primary generator as it spins down to keep the coolant going.

[@Yamyatos]

@@mnomadvfx Yeah i mean, after having experienced just that in Factorio, im really not sure why i found this unintuitive.

[@James-wd9ib]

Let's invent a giant lithium battery that can survive being spun at 100,000rpm

[@charlesblithfield6182]

If you want to be blown away about some of the limits of flywheel / gyro tech check out the specs on NASA mission Gravity Probe B. Its gyros were so sensitive they could measure the phenomenon of “frame dragging” which is the literal dragging the fabric of space by a moving mass. Everything about that mission is interesting worth looking up if you’re into that kind of engineering.

[@nuassul]

¿De casualidad no era donde el experimento consistía en hacer girar unas pequeñas esferas extremadamente perfectas de silicio dentro de un satélite y que uno de sus polos apuntaba a una estrella distante?

[@charlesblithfield6182]

@@nuassul yes sounds right

[@nicolasolton]

When will humanity have the tech to drag (or drive) on the fabric of space itself. Something like this is likely in our future assuming we don't go extinct first, and would revolutionize space travel.

[@miinyoo]

Exactly. The subtleties of rotation are still being discovered / measured. Fascinating and very unintuitive subject.

[@SirSpence99]

@@nicolasolton When you move your hand you are dragging on the fabric of space itself. The difficulty lies in doing it at sufficient scale and using that effect in a useful way.

[@tmjgaming9880]

Flywheels cannot change the momentum of something (height). But they can change the angular momentum (orientation).

[@Abednego-v2r]

Exactly, I was about to say the same thing. But now I'll just co-sign on your comment... Attitude yes, height no.

[@benmcreynolds8581]

Exactly that's why they build these multi flywheel systems, each with a 90° angle difference to each other. Allowing it to adjust in all directions

[@mnomadvfx]

I was going to say that something sounded hella fishy about that intro.

[@M0j0R1s1ng3]

When I heard that I cringed

[@nicolasolton]

​@M0j0R1s1ng3 why cringed?🤔🧐

[@UNgineering]

I can already see the headlines "NASA Reinvents the Wheel"

[@omarsv9047]

😂👍 Sí. Hay quienes creen que el mundo no existía antes de ellos nacer. Que la NASA desarrolla tecnologías, como también lo hacen muchos centros en el mundo, es innegable. Pero el volante (y el uso de su energía acumulada) tiene muchos años de existencia. Desde antes que existiera la NASA. Y el cojinete magnético tampoco es de su autoría.

[@timginter146]

even bots love your videos

[@vinx5518]

Bot😭😭😭😭

[@rheabelltower84]

Thank you for your wonderful comment.

[@RizeTB1]

ROFL put lipstick on a video made 11 years ago on NASA 360. It's even in your video @3:53

[@dylanmorrow4595]

@@RizeTB1huhhhhh…

[@JonathanWright-m4c]

They are only used to adjust orientation. Not Altitude. 0:10

[@pawesowa7283]

IIRC they can affect the height indirectly by positioning the spacecraft in a certain way with reference to the atmosphere and “sail” on its outer bounds

[@tuomaskk]

Probably he meant to say attitude. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacecraft_attitude_determination_and_control

[@licencetoswill]

Although when you draw energy from the flywheel, youll inevitably impart a torque to the space station. unless you draw from two counter - rotating flywheels in the same plane. otherwise things could get very weird when there's a huge power draw.

[@danilooliveira6580]

that is the idea, you always have flywheels in pairs

[@tuseroni6085]

@@framegrace1 no, when a magnetic field moves through a wire it creates an electric current (which we use to power things) and an equal an opposite magnetic fields, which acts against the magnet, this is known as lenz's law and it's what slows the flywheel when you draw power from it and it will impart a torque on the craft.

[@ddegn]

I was pleased to see the animation at 14:19 got this right.

[@ddegn]

@@tuseroni6085 I think @framegrace1 was thinking about conservation of energy without consideration of conservation of angular momentum. Marc likely recognized his error and deleted his comment.

[@YTANDY100]

@licencetoswill also while charging :-) if they used all the flywheels as batteries then they would all have to be paired to charge and discharge unless they need to rotate the satellite then charge or discharge one of the pair to move in the right direction :-)

[@johnfletcher1036]

Have you come across the giro bus that used to operate in Switzerland. As it stopped at a bus stop it picked up power from an overhead power line. The giro weighed about 3 tons and span at about 3000 rpm in vacuum chamber to reduce losses from air turbulence.

[@lloydevans2900]

The operating temperature constraints of chemical batteries were the reason for a particularly unique problem with the hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells used as the power source in the Apollo Command/Service Module (aka CSM), which was actually mentioned in the "Apollo 13" movie. In the immediate aftermath of the explosion which crippled the CSM, one of the last procedures mission control does in a desperate attempt to isolate the oxygen leak was to close the "reactant valves" on fuel cells 1 and 3. The CSM had 3 independent fuel cells, 2 oxygen tanks and 2 hydrogen tanks, with each fuel cell capable of being fed from either tank. The "reactant valves" were just valves between the tanks and the fuel cells. The electrical system in the command module had everything doubled up, powered by two independent distribution buses, labelled "Main Bus A" and "Main Bus B". These were redundant systems, with each one capable of powering all the equipment on the spacecraft, so if one failed, the other could completely take over. Also, only one fuel cell was technically necessary to power the entire spacecraft, though only if it was operating at maximum power output. Fuel cells are essentially primary cells, and are basically batteries: The difference being that the chemical reactants can be continuously supplied. So provided you can keep feeding hydrogen and oxygen to the fuel cells, they will continue to make electricity for as long as you like. They do of course have the same temperature constraints as any other chemical battery, and would stop working if allowed to rise too high or drop too low. In the environment of space, the more significant risk was the temperature dropping too low, since heat would be easily radiated away. The fuel cells operated at elevated temperature (they had to be kept hot to continue working), and the reactions which produced the electricity were also exothermic, producing heat while they were operating. As long as the fuel cells were operating with at least 50% of nominal power output, the heat produced this way was enough to compensate for heat loss, keeping them within their operating temperature range. However, with all three fuel cells operating, the electrical demand was not always enough to keep them hot enough. So the fuel cells had integrated electrical heating elements to compensate for this: If the power required by the spacecraft dropped below 50% of the fuel cell output, some of the power produced would be diverted into the heating elements, in order to maintain the temperature within the operating range. In the Apollo 13 movie, there was a discussion between the Flight Director (Gene Kranz) and the "EECOM" flight controller (Seymour Liebergot), where he suggests closing the reactant valves on fuel cells 1 and 3. Kranz objects on the grounds that the valves cannot be re-opened once closed, so this procedure would leave the CSM with only one operational fuel cell. Anyone familiar with how fuel cells operate may have questioned how this could be the case. Well, the characteristics of the fuel cells described above provide an answer to this: If the supply of hydrogen and oxygen to a fuel cell are shut off by closing the valves, the fuel cell can no longer produce power, so both methods of heat production (the fuel cell reactions plus the integrated heating elements) will also be shut off. The fuel cell will then cool down to below its operating temperature range. Once that happens, the fuel cell is effectively dead - even if the valves are re-opened, it cannot start back up.

[@BB-gr9hq]

Back in the 1980s, I worked on a project involving a flywheel made of depleted Uranium. As best as I can remember, the "wheel" or Uranium mass portion was approximately 500-700mm across and 100mm thick. The mass was obviously approaching 1000kg. We were developing an ultrasonic flaw inspection technique for it. There was a concern that the wheel might fail catastrophically when spun to it's intended speed. I imagine that would destroy just about any facility housing it.

[@link12313]

0:50 a flywheel can not change a satellite's altitude. They provide rotational corrections only while the RCS jets are used for translation and boost up burns.

[@de0509]

Attitude* not altitude

[@surikatga]

@@de0509 Actually altitude means how high something is over sea level. Reaction wheel cannot change that. Attitude however refers to several parameters of the satellite like rotational position and momentum at a given moment with respect to earth. Reaction wheel can change some parameters of that. Today a lot of satellites are using ion thrusters to raise their orbit periodically i.e. increase altitude :) Cold gas thrusters are heavy and used mostly for big stuff.

[@gillbates999]

F1 engines never reached 25,000 rpm. Cosworth reached 20,000 rpm in 2006, but today they're all running under 15,000rpm.

[@cben86]

Williams developed a flywheel battery for the first generation of hybrid F1 cars. It spun to 50,000 rpm. It didn't end up in their F1 car but Audi won Le Mans with the flywheel system.

[@nicolasolton]

Fassbender?

[@davids1inwestholl45]

Well done! I noticed how much miniaturization has come along w/ NASA's flywheels. The fist set for Hubble were HUGE by comparison. It's amazing how such a simple concept helped to keep both the ISS & Hubble up & stable for years! Hubble was intended for a 5 - 10 year run, and it's already 2025!

[@DunnickFayuro]

Flywheels batteries: a revolution!

[@finndriver1063]

There are trains in the UK that use FES! The Parry People Movers (class 139) are tiny high-efficiency railcars for small branch lines that are too expensive to electrify. The flywheel is spun either by electric pickups placed at stations, or by using a minute diesel motor that can always run at the ideal speed & torque. These are the trains used for West Midlands' Stourbridge branch line, which is the shortest branch in the UK. I'm concerned that they won't be around for much longer, though, which is sad.

[@melbournewolf]

5:38 your demonstration of the principle of work and a machine was excellently brillig!

[@AndyBKay]

There’s an ISP I used to work for that had 2 flywheel based UPS systems in their main building. I’m pretty sure they were installed when the place was built in 1995-7

[@pedrodepacas4335]

Flywheels are heavy right?

[@fewwiggle]

Was that building located near to SPIU?

[@skiittz2916]

I don't even need to watch this video to tell you why we don't use these "batteries" every where. The primary limiting factor for mechanical batteries is energy density. They require enormous mass and sizes to be viable.

[@TornadoTromboss]

they are good for short therm high energy demands or if you have multiple cycles per day. otherwise use lithium batteries.

[@clivestainlesssteelwomble7665]

The low mass ultra high speed flywheels .. vacuum flywheels used a fiber whip or wand as the flywheel ... they tend to be large diameter and need very efficient bearings.

[@skiittz2916]

@clivestainlesssteelwomble7665 ok then you are just transferring the difficulty ivy materials bc super efficient bearings are hard to make and most materials have a shatter rpm. The point is the same. There are physical limitations on this method of storing energy that make it impractical in 90% of applications.

[@matissebrement7161]

the rotative battery tends to have higher energy density the bigger the flywheel

[@DnBastard]

Think of them less as batteries and more as capacitors. There was a trolley bus in the 60s that used a flywheel and it was energy dense enough to let it go on parts of its route that didn't have overhead wires. They're more practical than you think

[@marksmith9218]

The gyrobus used this energy storage idea in the 1950s.

[@owengrossman1414]

The idea of a mechanical battery may be genius but the genius who thought of it died a long time ago. We examined the design challenges of using a flywheel to recover a car’s braking energy when I was in college 50 years ago. Back then we didn’t have the luxury of using carbon composite… or lithium batteries for that matter.

[@dianapennepacker6854]

Flywheels have been around since 6bc with Potters flywheels. Most likely even longer. A German inventor Presbytr recorded some of his machines using em. In the 1100s According to wiki. I am not familiar with him. Then of course you have windmills, grain mills, and sharpening wheels, and such also used the idea. Just not for electricity. Then of course James Watt use of them really took off with helping steam engines run smoothly. The E Dumpster is a giant dump truck for open mines that doesn't need to be recharged ever at the mine it is at. It goes up hill to collect ore. Then since it goes back down hill loaded. It gets all the energy back from regenerative breaking to repeat the process. It gets the energy essentially from the heavy ore. It is cool. It shows how rocks on top of hills or higher elevations have a lot of potential energy, and I doubt most people think about things at higher elevations having potential energy that can be tapped. Anyway just pointing it out! That is cool work. Too bad we didn't embrace batteries back then. We would have crazy electric motors, batteries, and flywheels I think by now. Can't wait to see what it looks like 40 years.

[@jamesyoungquist6923]

Don't commercial vehicles often use compressed air for energy storage during braking/acceleration?

[@NBSV1]

@@jamesyoungquist6923They used to use hydraulic fluid and an accumulator so it could run at higher pressure. Was somewhat common on things like garbage trucks. The idea was building pressure would slow the truck then you’d use that pressure to accelerate it to the next stop. In the end the weight and the complexity of the system meant it didn’t last long. In the end they didn’t save enough fuel to offset the cost of the system and keeping it going.

[@jamesyoungquist6923]

@@NBSV1 ah, thx for the background :)

[@KevinSmith-ys3mh]

​@@dianapennepacker6854-The use of gravity power isnt new, every hydropower dam ever built does that. Doing it with rocks/ores is less common, but I recall some counterweighted cable car trains and barge elevator systems like that, and an electric iron-ore railway in Norway or Sweden up over a mountain. Awesome engineering, though very niche😊!

[@mariomedina]

I've seen similar thing as a huge UPS for datacenters. It provides enough power for some small time, while the diesel generators finish starting.

[@alsmith20000]

6:45 comparison of battery with fly-wheel storage if the casing is damaged: I expect a flywheel to release its energy explosively if damage to the flywheel itself or its bearings were to occur.

[@tvuser9529]

Yep, a conventional bearing could certainly fail and overheat, and then things will get interesting fast. I'm sure the magnetic bearings could fail as well.

[@ksnax]

That is one of the reasons these things are often subterranean, not only for containment, but for stability and protection from damage as well.

[@tvuser9529]

@ And it may be part of the reason why this flywheel project wasn't used on the space station - potential for catastrophic damage. It's easy to fireproof batteries on a space station, just keep them unpressurised. No air, no battery fire.

[@Megabobster]

to be fair, chemical batteries also have a tendency to explode when their casings are damaged

[@nicolasolton]

​@tPassenger? How Would a,magnetic bearing fail?🤔🧐

[@AKA-f7p]

Now, that's a perfect sponsor. I didn't even try to skip.

[@forbiddenera]

So, you should mention that they still use fly wheels for reaction wheels regardless of whether they used for energy.

[@darthrainbows]

Mechanical energy storage like this makes a lot of sense here on the ground, especially for grid-scale or even home-scale use. Flywheels are comparatively cheap next to chemical batteries, and the weight disadvantage is next to meaningless when the thing is just going to sit stationary on the ground. There are few - if any - rare earths or other problematic materials required, the lifespan should be significantly longer than chemical batteries, there's no significant operational risks (vs stuff like dendrite formation in batteries), and the decommissioning and recycling process is vastly simpler.

[@derpmcghee]

In a sense, electric cars do use flywheel technology in regenerative braking. Not a one-to-one comparison, but it is fundamentally the same technology.

[@bwonghere]

Stopping a wheel isn't flywheel technology. Starting the wheel is the flywheel. That's how a 1:1 argument is made. Hydroelectric energy causes a flywheel to spin, and that energy is siphoned off creating electricity that is finally stored in the cars battery which is used in spinning the flywheels which are the wheels of the car, and is regenerated when the car stops. Electric cars and bikes have 20% further range through flywheel storage when recovering energy spent in spining the flywheel (road wheels) 😂

[@campbellmorrison8540]

I could be wrong but I thought the precession of a fly wheel was at 90 degrees to its rotation so it will actually try to turn up or down if you rotate it. Its what is used in some wrist strengthening devices to and can cause a portable generator to do some very weird things if you pick it up while running.

[@wlhgmk]

I might have this wrong but it would seem to me that if you put power into your fly wheel, it would impart an opposite spin on the satellite and if you took power from the fly wheel, a spin in the opposite direction. Think of sitting on a chair that can spin in the horizontal plane with very little friction. You spin up a fly wheel by hand and your chair turns. You put on the brakes to the spinning fly wheel and the chair spins in the opposite direction.

[@Aleksandr_N]

I remember a child sci-pop book written/released in 1984 in USSR (Moscow) by Nurbey Gulia "in the search of "Energy Capsule"". The author also became to a conclusion that the best option would be a flywheel (made of layered sheets of material) in vacuum chamber on magnetic bearings with motor-generator.

[@sociopathicnarcissist8810]

Ships have been using Gyro-stabilizer's for years, SeaKeeper and VEEM Marine Gyro stabilizer's can stop vessels rolling at sea up to 100 meters in length

[@M0j0R1s1ng3]

And your point is?

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

@@sociopathicnarcissist8810: 1. They've been using a gyro-stabilizer's _what_ for years, and the stabilizer's _what_ can stop vessels from rolling at sea? 2. When did "gyro-" and "marine" supposedly become brand names? 3. Why did you tell him something about years when he already said it?

[@sociopathicnarcissist8810]

@@M0j0R1s1ng3 Gyro-stabilizer's use the same principles as the NASA battery. They are just much bigger with the flywheel getting up to 23 tons.

[@sociopathicnarcissist8810]

@ I don't rate his research on this topic.

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

@@sociopathicnarcissist8810: Why do you keep referring to something that belongs to a gyrostabilizer (a gyrostabilizer's _something)_ but leaving its possession out?

[@kennethluedtkejr1903]

I worked on electric forklifts starting in 1977. So I understand the electrical. I would love to see how they retracted those bearings. The process must be pretty cool.

[@dougcox835]

You have the reaction thing wrong. It's not through speeding up and down that they are used for. That certainly is a thing but it's the gryoscopic reaction that they use. That bicycle wheel was a perfect example. Nothing is speeding up that. The slowing down is negligible. A gyro wants to remain in the same position in space so if you give it a push it will react in the 90 degree opposite direction. On a space ship this will move it without using rockets.

[@SciFiFactory]

No, reaction wheels work by spinning them up and down. The torque required is directly used to point the spacecraft. What you describe are so called control moment gyros (CMG). They exist and are used where high agility is needed. But they are more complex and therefore have more points of failure and higher cost. Also they require a more complex control paradigm as they can otherwise end up in orientations where they loose control authority in some directions. For these reasons most systems use traditional reaction wheels.

[@dougcox835]

@@SciFiFactory Ok, I learned something today. Both of us are right though. I asked ChatGPT and it gave me a good little lesson. Pay attention to that last sentence though: How CMGs Work CMGs control a spacecraft's attitude (orientation) by exploiting the conservation of angular momentum. There are two main types: Single-Gimbal CMGs - These have a spinning flywheel mounted on a gimbal, and the direction of angular momentum is changed by rotating the gimbal. Variable-Speed CMGs - These change the speed of the flywheel itself (which is what you’re referring to), but they are less commonly used in high-precision applications. Most spacecraft rely on single-gimbal CMGs, which redirect angular momentum rather than constantly changing the speed of the flywheel. They work more efficiently than purely variable-speed gyros. Why Speeding Up & Slowing Down Has Limits You're correct in thinking that just adjusting the speed of a flywheel alone has limits: Maximum & Minimum RPM: The flywheel can only spin so fast before reaching material limits, and slowing it down to zero would make it useless. Efficiency: Changing the speed takes energy, and the spacecraft has to supply power for those adjustments. Accumulated Angular Momentum ("Saturation"): Over time, if the system keeps adjusting without external correction (like thrusters or magnetic torque rods), the spacecraft can reach a point where it can't make further adjustments. How CMGs Avoid Friction and Saturation Issues Low-Friction Bearings - Advanced CMGs use magnetic or very high-quality mechanical bearings to minimize friction losses. Momentum Dumping - If CMGs reach their saturation limit, spacecraft use: Reaction Wheels & Thrusters: To reset momentum. Magnetorquers: On Earth-orbiting satellites, Earth's magnetic field can be used to bleed off excess angular momentum. Gimbal Motion Instead of Speed Changes - Most modern CMGs redirect rather than just speed up/down, making them more effective over long missions.

[@SciFiFactory]

@@dougcox835 Maybe I should have added a disclaimer that I work for a company that builds both, reaction wheels and CMGs. My objection in the first post was just against you saying that the main working principle of RWs is the gyroscopic torque. Of course the gyroscopic effect has to be considered for RWs as well, as they turn each other by turning the satellite, but that happens much slower than in CMGs where the gyroscopic torque is the main effect you are going for. While in this case the answer of ChatGPT was very good, I am not sure if we should use it for citations just yet. :D

[@dougcox835]

@@SciFiFactory Yeah, it is biased and does make things up (just like people do by the way) so I just try to be objective and see if it passes the smell test.

[@steveyountz1757]

I assume you folks know that at one point you showed a lathe, and often showed the Hubble telescope when referring to the space station.

[@abram7547]

6:02 --- "Every motor is a generator" --- could you elaborate on that? I don't quite get how induction motors could generate power: wouldn't it's stator need an external source of energy to create magnetic field required for electricity generation?

[@fewwiggle]

I suppose he thought "Every motor is a generator" was a more elegant way to put it than something like "Every motor is a generator when the motor/generator is allowed to spin freely and, if necessary, when a temporary source of energy creates the initial magnetic field until the motor/generator can supply its own current for the field".

[@Benoit-Pierre]

Already wrote a long comment on this, but it's true for 99% motors, AC or DC. For some types you need an excitation power in order to get a reactive power, usually with a ratio of 1:10. So yes in some case you need an external source, but still you motor will convert mechanical energy into « more electricity than you had at the beginning ». Most plants work this way today. It helps keeping generators sync. Plants which can start without any source are rare, and harder to sync ( old hydro in France ).

[@scottyfing9183]

I read a story in Discover magazine back in the 90's/2000's about a company using this exact idea scaled down for use in electric cars.

[@SciFiFactory]

I work for a company that develops reaction wheels for satellites. It would be pretty easy to recover the energy from the wheels. But most customers don't want those intermittend energy sources on the power bus. So we are using load resistors to convert the energy to heat... which then is difficult to get rid of without air. Attitude control is difficult enough, even without having to take into account how it influences the power to all other systems. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that many manufacturers choose not to bother. :)

[@pimianimavdo1523]

Many years ago (back in the 90's in fact), I had the idea about using flywheels to dynamically modify the momentum of a moving vehicle (car, plane, drone, sub, etc.) to assist in better maneuverability and directional changes (including acceleration bursts and deceleration absorption). Having seen your video, i do believe I shall do a prototype as soon as I can afford the time and expenses to properly do so. Thanks for the inspiration to move ahead with my own crazy ideas. side note : glad to see that NASA & other companies can do this with satellites a it validates my ideas :)

[@ThatTimeTheThingHappened]

This is a reminder that the concept of Kinetic Energy and Potential energy are BOTH sources of energy. I get annoyed when people say. That PE is a source of energy but KE is not. Fly wheels are literally rotational kinetic energy and ALSO a source of energy.

[@ACCPhil]

Flywheels on the electricity grid have a slightly different function. Old-style thermal power stations have massive parts which rotate at grid-synchronous speeds. 120 tonnes of metal at 3,000rpm (50Hz) provides a lot of physical inertia which makes it easier to control the grid frequency. Solar, wind, batteries, interconnectors are not grid synchronous so are treated as DC sources which have traditionally had an inverter which synchs with the grid frequency. As a higher percentage of power is coming from DC sources, the amount of inertia in the system is lower. Advances in control systems mean that DC sources can now be grid-forming as well as grid-following but there are plants coming online which use flywheels to literally provide inertia.

[@osky.engineer]

I have never really thought about mechanical batteries, very interesting though!

[@yedidyah-jedshlomoh1533]

water turbines at dams are mechanical batteries. The old idea gets more practical when technology becomes more advanced.

[@WizardInAus]

Thanks this is exactly what I was hoping it would be and is an amazing technology in conjunction with a deep cycle battery and solar panels. This is going to be an awesome video for my upcoming technology innovation for off grid living.

[@Reach4OurStar]

These mechanical batteries are a great innovation

[@wertdeg]

my dad had one of those spinning desk toys when i was a kid and i used to spin it all the time.. i realized something like it but heavier with some modifications could be spun up really fast to store electricity.. clearly nasa owes me some money..

[@OrenArieli]

Excellent video. Well presented and informative. Thank you for putting this together.

[@rrbimmer]

Vacuums do not have temperature. Temperature is a property of matter. The absence of matter means the absence of matter thus no temperature. Space stations actually overheat. They are cooled via radiation which is why they have large panels where coolant is flowed through to produce infrared radiation to cool via radiation.

[@SpiritmanProductions]

Thanks for a nice video. It's comforting to hear proper English pronunciation, too, instead of all that A.I. slop.

[@MrKarlGP]

I really enjoy your delivery, it's engaging, very clear and natural.

[@charlesvanderhoog7056]

Thanks for your sponsor mention of Opera. I thought they had disappeared.

[@theonlywoody2shoes]

Porsche had a flywheel KERS system, developed by the F1 Williams team, in their GT3 R Hybrid back in the early 2010’s. The flywheel was angled to counteract body roll when cornering.

[@atlanticx100]

French telecom used this as a backup power for the French telephones back in the day. I have been trying to find a link to no avail.

[@fishyerik]

According to Carnot's theorem, if your heat sink is 0 K the theoretical maximum efficiency of a heat engine is 100% with any heat source with higher temperature than 0 K. While you don't get that cold even in space, you can get pretty close, which means it should be possible to design a Rankine cycle with helium as the working fluid that is able to turn even low temperature heat into power with extremely high efficiency, when there's no sun for solar panels. To me that would be an obvious way to store energy when you're guaranteed unobstructed solar power about 12 hours a day. Also, for reasons that are beyond me, they apparently have a a big heavy system on the ISS to reject excessive waste heat out to space that is based on ammonia, which among other things requires a big heating system stop the ammonia from freezing. I do get that they need to reject a lot of heat, I suspected that was the case, and just looked it up. What I don't get is why they use a lot of energy to reject that heat, and ammonia that among other issues risks freezing, when they could use helium, and turn most of that unwanted heat into useful power.

[@tvuser9529]

My guess: Helium is hard to keep contained for long, it leaks out. Also it probably has low thermal mass compared to ammonia, so you'd need a lot more of it. Turning the heat into power sounds neat. Could be that they just don't need it, that solar panels are an easier/cheaper way to get power. When they're on the night side they get no solar power but also have much less need to radiate heat.

[@stuartclough915]

In space you cant lose the heat, as you are in a vacuum. Only radiation works and that needs much higher temperatures.

[@BushidoBrownSama]

​@@stuartclough915this is the answer, there's no convection in outer space

[@fishyerik]

​@ Heat radiates from everything that's warmer than 0 K.

[@fishyerik]

@tvuser9529 Helium has it's issues, but so does ammonia, and when part of the system is way below the freezing point of ammonia, that's a severe drawback for ammonia. Ammonia has much larger heat capacity for a given volume, at the same temperature and pressure, so if only pumped around to transport heat, helium would require much beefier lines, but when you extract power from the heat, the energy doesn't appear from nothing, heat is turned into power. Helium loss from leaking wouldn't have to be significant issue. Helium is difficult to contain, but difficult is what they do. Ammonia, besides the risk of freezing if anything goes wrong, with potential catastrophic consequences, is flammable, toxic and corrosive. There are other potential working fluids with much lower freezing points than ammonia, that also isn't flammable and toxic and corrosive. I just think the fact that helium won't freeze at any temperature unless under high pressure is a huge advantage, besides being inert and non-toxic. Nitrogen for example, quite easy to handle and safe, much lower freezing point than ammonia, and lends itself very well to extract energy with high efficiency from the temperature difference between ballpark room temperature and outer space. All those points have merit, but aren't deal breakers. And while they don't need the power they could generate from heat rejection on the ISS, that's because they have systems that typically generates all the power they need, but that came at a cost. And don't know what the power systems have costed, but it's a significant part of the total cost, and I think they have spent over 200 billion USD, in current value on the ISS, in total. And it's always great to have margins and backup power, especially you know, when your life depends on it and you can't just call someone to swing by the same afternoon with spare parts and specific expertise. The orbital period of the ISS is 92.9 minutes, being on the sunny side or not doesn't have that much effect on how much heat they need to reject from within the space station, and they could store heat if they really wanted to maximize the power generation from such a system. Anyhow, I still find it strange that they make it so complicated and wasteful, it's not just that they don't use the potential to generate power, they waste power on rejecting heat. Pumping coolants to remove heat from a space station seems a bit like using pumps to let water pass a dam. Thanks for the intelligent feedback by the way, even if I don't think you provided a complete explanation, all your points have at least some merit, and some are probably a big part of the real reasons, especially to why they don't use helium specifically.

[@Rick_Cavallaro]

I don't think reaction wheels use what we normally think of as the "gyroscopic effect". They're simply using rotational inertia.

[@ErickAlex1]

Another great example is the drive utilized to propel airplanes on us aircraft carriers. Produces insane amounts of power in a short time frame.

[@liamnehren1054]

7:08 but they should, there was a 1960s experiment using flywheels in buses and it went swimmingly for quite some time but had to be scrapped due to safety concerns which thanks to tech advancement are no longer an issue. The flywheel buses took less then a modern EV car to spool up, for 4 hours of use, had 2 massive steel flywheels in a steel container spinning in opposite directions to remove the gyroscopic effect and ran entirely off the flywheels. Modern Flywheel based mechanical batteries run at much higher speeds thanks to improvements in bearings and material science and so can reach the energy density in a much safer way without even the slightest chance of a giant steel disc breaking containment and flying down the road like happened with the 60s experiment.

[@tehspamgozehere]

Nice vid so far. However, minor point.. Not every generator is a motor, and not every motor is a generator... Oh alright fine, they are, but some are FAR more efficient when run in "reverse" than others. The idea of just grabbing any old motor and cranking it by hand doesn't actually work all that well. You need one that is designed for high efficiency in both "modes", for the want of a better word. Now if I could only remember a few examples. Older cars will have alternators. Older still will have generators. Those used to be pretty good both ways. A switching motor though is rubbish. Something about pulsed coils instead of continual fields. Edit: Finished the vid. Good presentation. Earned a sub. Another guy here on YT made a 3D printed vacuum battery. As in it's a series of plungers that when drawn out, create a vacuum within a cylinder. The weight of the atmosphere pushes them back in again, which turns a small generator. I personally love the idea, though I'm not sure about energy density. If a cylinder ruptures, it'll implode. Which is far easier to work with than an explosion. And given the vacuum forms almost instantly, to vary the 'charge' all one has to do is extend the cylinder. Provides constant pressure for the full draw, whereas compressing air into a cylinder has a high and low end to a scale. With full charge obviously being quite dangerous and potentially explosive. Personally, I'm partial to artificial dams used for hydroelectric. Pump from the ocean up into a resevoir in the hills with solar power, then drain the resevoir back through the pumps to generate power at night. Efficiency is supposedly up around 95%. Fresh water from a lake or similar might be better for the local environment. Rain is 'free' power.

[@mrfinesse]

thanks for the video. 11:25 in the video-- I could have sworn that the forces generally perpendicular to plane of rotation. But then my memory is shot....

[@myredeemerlivesakatom2314]

Exactly. The force of the spinning wheel is not in the opposite direction. It’s called gyroscopic precessions and is at approx 90° to the spinning direction.

[@quinnroberts4853]

Wrong force. There's one force that resists rotation on other planes, but there is also just the equal and opposite reaction

[@pineberry212]

You did a good job explaining how flywheels work. Especially expanding on their uses in space. I'm working at a place called torus, one of the things they make here is a flywheel.

[@awesium4077]

I feel like flywheel batteries would be good for general electricity storage despite their relatively weak properties due to that not mattering when renewables already take up MUCH more space, and the batteries are low-cost.

[@brianswille]

A flywheel system was used in racing. KERS Great video

[@Kenneth_James]

US Navy ships use flywheels that can provide short bursts of high power, which are needed for weapons like railguns and directed energy weapons.

[@mcdoodlematush363]

This science is beautiful, so is this presentation!

[@tuseroni6085]

the biggest thing is getting faster and faster rotations, since KE=1/2Iw^2 where I is the moment of inertia and w is the rotational velocity. this means the kinetic energy in the battery will increase linearly with mass but exponentially with velocity. this also means you can get better kwh/weight ratio with a lighter flywheel. idk the effect the lower inertia would have on power output though, seems like it would be able to get higher peak current but struggle long term, but that's just a guess really. of course with greater rotational speed comes more centrifugal force trying to pull it apart and so you need stronger and stronger materials. interestingly i had come up with this idea independently a long time ago, i thought about the conservation of angular momentum and my first thought was "what if you put a giant coil around the earth" then scaled it down a bit...a lot...and i thought of a large spherical magnet surrounded by a coil, it would be in a vacuum chamber on magnetic bearings to minimize friction. i knew if friction was 0 it would spin indefinitely, but i figured there had to be some force that acted against the magnet when you drew a load that would slow the magnet down (since i don't believe in perpetual motion machines) but i didn't know at the time what that was, so i looked it up and learned about lenz's law, i also learned that nasa had already created the very thing i thought up and was using it as a battery, something that hadn't occurred to me. also one other thing, not all motors are generators, only those which use a permanent magnet, some motors use an electromagnet in place of the permanent magnet, those cannot be used as generators.

[@KevinSmith-ys3mh]

@Tusroni - Regarding the last paragraph of your post about "motors as generators" sorry, not at all true. Haveing owned and repaired many over the years, the vast majority of generators in service aren't PM types. An example is the alternator on most car engines today has a spinning magnet coil winding, excited thru a controller from the 12vdc battery has no magnetism when disconneced from power. Yes, I know it isnt used as a motor, but the same principles are used in those that are; such as the gigantic Motor/Generators used in some pumped storage dams that send water to an upper resevoir when exess power is cheap, and runs down thru as a generator for high demand times. Also some car starter/generator and hybrid systems have been tending to minimise use of rare-earth magnet$$. So, most non-PM motors DONT generate or generators DO motoring (as built) but many could with modifications.

[@fewwiggle]

I wonder if a better title for this video might be "How NASA added to the R&D for Mechanical Batteries that was also taking place in other public/government labs and the private sector"?

[@l0I0I0I0]

Ty! What's the most efficient way to use a flywheel to produce usable heat?

[@waynenocton]

Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think it’s true that EVERY electric motor can also generate power. Now I’m definitely sure that every generator isn’t also a motor, but again not so sure that every motor can also be a generator.

[@republicofsandles]

System level engineering, I'm going to take a note of that.

[@FutureAIDev2015]

I just had an idea...a flywheel made of a carbon fiber shell with its edge containing a block of metal like steel on the inside. Carbon fiber is best in tension, so putting the weight inside the edge of a hollow shell would put the shell in constant tension, which should make it withstand even higher RPM.

[@jindrycz]

7:55 Modern F1 engines can’t go 25 000 RPM. Although in 2006 there was an F1 engine named Cosworth CA2006, the first F1 engine to reach 20 000 RPM. Modern hybrid V6 engines could might do the same, but they are capped at 15 000 RPM by regulations and usually operate at even lower speeds. So…you can say that compared to modern F1 engines, the G3 can do (100000/15000=6,6) almost 7 times higher RPM. Which is even crazier.👌👍

[@volodumurkalunyak4651]

F1 turbocharger can go 100k RPM and beyond not only spinning, but also compressing around ~500g of air per second.

[@prilep5]

Using flywheel systems for regenerative breaking

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

For the breaking of what? What sort of thing would we be dividing into 2 or more pieces without cutting or tearing it?

[@prilep5]

@ U🤪

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

@: Huhh?

[@prilep5]

@ chibiricupakapa

[@HelloKittyFanMan]

@: Wow, there you go, not making sense again.

[@jdsahr]

Re: satellites, it's not "altitude", it's "attitude." You can't change the altitude of a satellite with a flywheel.

[@mtteslian9159]

Brazilian uranium beneficiation centrifuges have been using magnetic bearings for many years, and as far as I know, they are the only ones using this technology.

[@toi_techno]

A gyroscopic flywheel space battery This is very much late stage clockwork technology

[@handbananaistherapist642]

A flywheel . . . thank you and good night !

[@Abednego-v2r]

New technology

[@handbananaistherapist642]

@@Abednego-v2r sarcasm : verbal irony

[@jdsahr]

Flywheels are great for energy storage ... for periods of time on the order of hours. It's the friction loss in the bearings, and even the air resistance (unless you evacuate the chamber in which the flywheel rotates). Also, the electromagnetic motor/generator has to be able to accommodate a wide range of rotational speeds. If you puncture the (vacuum) chamber holding a high energy flywheel, the next thing you should do is run like hell.

[@billing100]

when you speedup the wheel does't it turn satelite to opposite direction? you have pair of wheels running opposite directions?

[@velcroman11]

And there you are. It doesn’t matter how good a thing it is, the manufacture will always take the cheaper option. Think of this next time you step on to a plane. The mechanisms employed to keep the plane in the air was the cheaper alternative.

[@vistotutti6037]

Slight correction, it is "Attitude", not "Altitude" adjusted by flywheels in orbit. Cool tech with so many applications. Thanks for the vid.

[@wazza33racer]

FESS is not a new idea, but it has significant issues on earth since it has gyroscopic issues where the FESS has to be on a gimble, free to float despite rotation of the earth and gravity incurring friction on the bearings and air friction that needs a vacuum to overcome. In space the issues are much less severe and magnetic bearings are viable. Combining the FESS as a reaction wheel is a perfect example of synthesis.

[@Gislos]

Reinventing the wheel - Interesting video, well explained

[@DylanWoods-kw6km]

The video starts at 4:58

[@snoopaka]

I hope they get more run in stationary Energy storage.

[@marcwolf60]

One advantage of a carbon fibre flywheel is when it fails it will disintegrate into carbon strands- not fracture into metal chunks.

[@DanRyan-v5y]

They experimented with flywheel storage on light rail vehicles in the UK. Didnt get anywhere.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

I remember reading about these in *POPULAR MECHANICS* {or a similar magazine} back in the 1970s or 1980s.

[@schmiddy8433]

The problem with flywheels in spacecraft is that stabilizes itself in space so it wouldnt be able to be spun up on the ground and then launched, it would have to get spun up at its final orbit.

[@rommelfcc]

Yep that should work if you got a spinning top for a gyro and then shunt against it and then slowly bringing it back into the center or wherever you want it to be. More moving parts more complexity more things to go wrong good luck 🎉 👍😎👍

[@Vort_tm]

When they calculate energy density for the batteries on the space station, do they calculate the energy required to send up replacements and the frequency of replacement? It should be factored in.

[@blackkestrel]

Great video explaining flywheel energy storage! Combining rotational kinetic energy with thermal energy has the potential to create a high-specific-energy storage system currently being developed.

[@robcat2075]

11:13 The action-opposite reaction effect described will only happen when some force is being applied to speed up the wheel, as when device is in "motor" mode". When the device is coasting, as neither generator nor motor, its force on the boat will be negligible. When the device is in generator mode, the effect will be to drag the boat in the same direction as the wheel is spinning.

[@EngineerLewis]

There is a company trying to get their flywheel into places where energy is dumped into resistor banks .. insted they can store the energy and then send it back to the system when needed.

[@simonjelley]

Stored energy is stored energy. It might not give you a large fireball on failure, but the excitement of a 100,000RPM flywheel escaping is hardly better. I’ve seen the results of a bearing failure on a 10,000 RPM gyroscope, and it wasn’t discouraged from exploring the building it was in by trivial obstacles like walls. I know which I’d prefer to fail in any building I’m in. Even light flywheels for control moment gyros on Hubble have struggled for long bearing life.

[@deanmartin1045]

What happens to the satellites orientation when it's spinning up the flywheel?

[@bhblueberry]

They should make this battery flywheel movable in 3d because maneuvers would slow it down..

[@jinxhead4182]

"But this isn't really new tech!" "hahahaha!", flywheel goes *brrrrrrrrrrrrr*

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

I bought a few "ForeverSpin" tops. They do not spin forever. Nor will they last forever, as nothing does. Cool viddy!

[@rylandrc]

If I spun something in space, would it keep spinning forever?

[@legna199111]

Magnetic bearings in space would also work wonders

[@AKG58Z]

I like flywheel mechanical batteries but I would use some kind of a hybrid approach like using lithium ion or sup.cap alongside.

[@AllTheFasteners]

Energy is stored in proportion to the square of the (rotational) speed, but output voltage will be linearly proportional to the speed, so that must lead to quite a high voltage range for the power electronics to deal with...right?