Mechanical battery.

gravity based batteries like the "accumulators" used to work the bascules of Tower bridge.

The very term "mechanical battery" looks like a lame way of making a well-known, long-established and understood technology, with many good uses, sound like it is a new competitor.

Many years ago I read an article on flywheel-powered shunting engines. I think it was in 'The Eagle' comic, circa 1955, estimated from where we were living at the time.

Yup, like storing energy in a 'battery' of railway trucks on a slope (ARES).

Cheers, T i m

This may have been for use in chemical plants where there could be explosive vapours. IIRC it's also been used in urban trams or buses. Not that many new ideas around apart from some of the genuine quantum stuff.

No-one seems to know why flywheels store energy. Not really.

Bill

And clockwork springs.

Brian

Hmmm... there's a flywheel on my car engine that is not storing any energy. Ah, it's not spinning! Maybe it's something to do with moment of inertia and angular velocity. That seemed to explain it simply when I was at school.

Exactly.

Years ago on a flight in an aircraft packed with electronics, I asked what the whining under the floor was: 'rotary converter: generates all the power for the racks from the aircraft batteries' 'why not an inverter?''Ever seen what happens to the battery voltage when you raise the undercarriage?'

The spinning mass of turbines and generators on the grid is the only form of short term storage it has.

Or maybe not...

Flywheels have been tried as an energy storage device in modern hybrid diesel locomotives. They resulted in a reduction in fuel consumption as compared to a pure diesel, but not as much as a diesel/battery hybrid.

Chemical plants often used fireless locomotives to avoid the explosion risk:

Bettery? Brian

What about the ones where you pump water to the top of a hill? The lift on the cliffs at various places around England were operated by counterbalances witch were filled or drained of water. Brian

Don't know about locomotives , but for road transport ,they came to an abrupt abondonment. All is fine until there is an accident. The flywheel dislodges and continues like a much more energetic panjanderam, demolishing everyone and everything in its very long path.

These never caught on either...

Yes, they think it's an improvement on a battery. :-)