Design and construction of flywheel energy storage systems

• Main Author: Mohammad Firdaus Mahmood.
• Other Authors: Khong Poh Wah
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Energy conservation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/16412
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Flywheel energy storage (FES) system can have energy fed in the rotational mass of a flywheel, store it as kinetic energy, and release out upon demand. FES system is famous for moderating speed fluctuations in an engine through its inertia. Flywheel can be easily found in any motor vehicles. Some had named it as FES system as mechanical batteries. With the current latest technology, many industries had work on improving this system to maximise its storage capacity. In this project, a prototype of a simple and basic FES system is being design and fabricated manually, using some simple recycle items (i.e. bicycle wheels, sprockets and chains) so as to keep it at a low cost. The unique characteristic of this FES system uses magnetic forces to rotate one another. The idea of designing the system in such a way is to analyse as to whether by using magnets to move a few flywheels together is effective. A total of two flywheels are fabricated for the FES system and two sets of dynamos are incorporated into the FES system so as to generate some form electrical energy from the dynamos with the energy generated by the flywheels when it rotates. The initial idea was to have all the movement created by means of magnets, however due to some budget constrain, the dynamos are contacted to the flywheels in order to obtain the energy from the flywheels. The initial input power was produce by a DC motor to create a rotation momentum for the entire system. Various experiments had been conducted to check whether more power can be produced with the same number of flywheels available in the system. From the experiments, results shown that more power can be obtained from the flywheel when more power generators (i.e. dynamos) are incorporated into the system. However, the flywheel will lose its momentum fast and the rotational speed of the flywheel will slow down at a fast rate. The location of where the dynamos were placed also played an important factor. From the experiment shows that there are certain locations of where should the dynamos be placed in order to acquire the maximum amount of power.