What if we put a Flywheel Energy Storage System between a Renewable Energy Source (Solar, Wind, etc) and an Electric Vehicle Chrager?
Would be possible to really improve charging time by taking advantage of key cababilities like high power density and also the capacity of several charge/discharge cycles?
Please bring your thoughts!! Free-Expression....
see the papers that I have published, they would be so useful for you
Dear Piero!
The flywheel-based energy storages are well-known devices. Even though the idea to build flywheel-driven vehicles did not become a commonly accepted solution (e.g, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus), the grid storages nowadays are in active use (see the company "Beacon Power" and check out the devices they are using). Such solutions are especially demanded in the areas, where peak generation does not match with peak load periods. For example, to store the energy from the wind turbines and solar panels. Going closer to your question, I would say that in general flywheel will not improve the charging time. Charging time is mainly determined by the charger, cable, and battery properties. The ability of the battery to take the energy from the charger as fast as possible is an up-to-date bottleneck in the EVs chargers. You can supply the EV with enormous voltage and provide as much power as you want, but the problem is that the battery can’t take all this power instantly. Thus, the flywheel would not help the battery to be charged faster, sorry. The flywheel may actually help to surpass the temporary energy lack periods (for example, charge the car during no-sun or no-wind periods), i.e act as an on-site accumulator (see the materials related to “grid dumping” or “energy dumping”). So, the flywheel can help if you have your charging station located in the place, where the grid is weak and maximum power is lower than the rated charging power of your EV. But if you have a strong grid, adding the extra flywheel will not bring any effect.
Hi Mr. Vostrov, first of all thanks for your detailed answer! That was a free expression thought looking to improve mass EV adoption within renewables and improved charging time.
You are right the Flywheel itself won´t be able to improve the charging time if the battery still figures as the bottleneck. But if there is a huge power available to be quick discharged as the Flywheel can perform, maybe it would motivate battery technologies be improved as well. That might figure as a shortcut instead of waiting for Grid improvement that hardly rely on Government actions.