4 ms·

That's part of the UK's plan: https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1057463/energy-grid-blackouts-to-be-warded-off-with-flywheel-storage-1057463.

• padjo 2y ago
  Same all over, apparently we had the biggest in the world a few years back, I’d imagine it’s been overtaken by now https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/stories/irelands-great-grid-stabilizer.html https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/en/home/stories/irelan...
  • tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    Together, the flywheel and the synchronous condenser have an inertia of 4,000 megawatt-second That's insane, imagine if it let go.
    • HPsquared 2y ago
      In electrical terms 4 GJ is 1,111 kWh. That's about 15 EV batteries' worth, or about £220 worth of retail electricity (at 20p/kWh). So it's a lot compared to the usual domestic things people are used to, but not much in grid terms. Or if you consider the Irish grid (average consumption around 5 GW) that's enough energy to power the grid for about 0.8 seconds (obviously it's not going to have enough instantaneous power output to do that, but again for a sense of scale). If Ireland had 10 of them, that'd be 8 grid-seconds worth of energy. Although, of course, actual disturbances aren't going to be that large. A few percent imbalance perhaps? So if the whole grid had an instantaneous 10% imbalance, one of those units could carry it for 8 seconds. (EDIT: changed energy numbers to fit the appropriate power grid)