Are flywheels and dual-mass flywheels used in wind turbines? Would it make sense to use dual-mass flywheels in applications where the turbine blades have less inertia? Does a non-standard design for the dual-mass flywheel (with elastic for example connecting the two parts where the first part is allowed to rotate further before moving the second part) make sense sometimes?
How does the turbine quickly and often becoming misaligned with the wind, like I think I see airborne systems do often, impact this?
I was a proponent of flywheels for a long while but lately I am thinking that they are maybe not flexible enough with a direct mechanical connection and not price xompetitive to batteries. I didnt do any thorough investigation though and would be happy to hear if anyone has some more indepth knowledge about this. In any case, it seems at this point, AWE is such an immature technology that it is wise to leave flywheels out of the equation.
The dual mass flywheel is interesting though. Could you elaborate what kind of nonlinearities you would like to smooth out with such a device?
I haven’t studied generators yet, but I assume that they like a more smoother input than you get if the turbine frequently starts and stops, and that they would generate more electricity with a more even input.
Also the dual-mass flywheel could perhaps also smooth out the spinning of the turbine blades themselves. When the blades momentarily slow down or stop, the flywheel would transfer, I was thinking, rotational energy back to the blades.
If you decide to forego using a generator and batteries and just provide direct rotational energy for machines, I imagine a dual-mass flywheel would also help.
I plan to use a rope drive from the spinning blades to the ground though. Maybe rope drive + flywheel already gives the same effect as a dual-mass flywheel?
I would be interested in learning more about flywheels and how to decide on the right mass of them and so on.
I am not sure I understand the full implications of the dual mass flywheel for the rotating kite power generator. I would expect any rotating mass would add some smoothing, and it seems to me that the dual flywheel is best suited to smooth out the more high frequent changes in torque.
An electric generator I believe has quite a large window of speeds and torques where it works well, until the torque or power is too large and must be limited. They also dont like low speeds.
Now the next point is if the grid can accept energy in varyong power or if it must be delivered smoothly. I think batteries are a good first iteration for most uses and flywheels are more of a possible optimization. This is particularily true if the flywheel feeds of electrical power rather than some direct mechanical power transfer.
For the rotating power station I would guess that a mechanical direct connection to the flywheel is not what you want, as you need to control the speed and torque closely so that the tether «beam» does not collapse.
(I admit to being quite ignorant on this particular type of AWE…)