3 ms·

You don't have to get to grid scale for 25 kWh to seem like not much. Your average, underfunded community or educational theater has 150-200 lighting dimmers,

• dredmorbius 12y ago
  To be fair, Beacon gangs its units -- you wouldn't have a single 25 kWh module, but an installation of them. The company's demonstration project is a 20 MW capacity plant with 200 flywheels. http://www.energycentral.com/generationstorage/energystorage/news/vpr/11127/Beacon-Power-Flywheel-Plant-in-Stephentown-Reaches-Full-20-MW-Capacity http://www.energycentral.com/generationstorage/energystorage... The other factor is that when you're operating at grid scale, it's overall changes to the grid flow that you're concerned with. A large city might have a peak load of 2000 MW, and the plant here could handle a fluctuation of 10% -- given the law of large numbers, that's a lot. Sure, you might be turning on a slew of light banks in any given period, but someone somewhere else could be cycling down a cooling plant, or resistance heater, or the like. I suspect large rapidly cycling loads might also be at issue -- with electrified transit, light rail and trolley buses make high instant demands on the grid, and then return energy through regenerative braking. I don't know how such loads are managed, but they're substantial and I do know that utilities tend to segregate these from other residential and commercial circuits.
• JshWright 12y ago
  You need some LEDs man...
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]