Re: Now the Bay Area rolling blackouts begin...

From: Chuck Kuecker (ckuecker@mcs.net)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 12:44:23 MST


At 11:01 AM 1/18/01 -0500, you wrote:

>I was thinking the flywheel could have six counterrotating smaller wheels
>around
>it. So, when power is added, the the main flywheel is accelerated in one
>direction
>and the support flywheels the other direction. So, if there a power
>outage, power
>is drawn from all of them at once, providing smooth transition and power
>output.
>Also, if the flywheel was levitating in its vacuum above the
>superconductor, then
>power could be drawn directly to slow it to prevent the flywheel from graxing
>anything at a high rate of speed.
>
>Your grenage sounds like the weapon in James Bond where the guy has a
>sawblade on a
>whip. Another example from RPG's is the shuriken cannon, where discs of high
>strength and edge sharpness are spun to a high speed and launched using
>electromagnetic force.
>
>If the battery housing was moved, for example, without some kind of
>compensation,
>then the moving parts might contact, which is an issue. There might be
>some kind
>of ablative material on the normally distant surfaces. That would be another
>situation for the autoshutdown with the counterrotating wheels.
>
>Ross

Why not two counterrotating wheels? Simpler mechanically...and as long as
you equalize speeds, no gyroscopic effects to worry about.

Chuck Kuecker



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:20 MDT