A potter sits at her wheel.
In front of her is the wheel head,
ready to receive a ball of clay.
It is still for now though, an axle
runs down from the wheel head to a
heavier flywheel below.
She braces her toe against the edge of
the flywheel and pushes. In the long kicking
motion.
The flywheel begins to turn.
As it picks up speed, she moves her
foot closer to the center of the flywheel.
The flywheel is carried forward by its own
momentum.
Rather than the long pushing kick she used
to get it moving, she now needs just
tap gently with her heel.
With the wheel head spinning, she can now
work on her pot.
The city's spin allows her to work the
clay drawing it up and shaping it into
a s sided vessel.
She doesn't need to think about controlling the
speed of the wheel.
Its momentum keeps the wheels spinning constantly
as she focuses on the clay.
With the pot partially forms, she taps the
wheel again, restoring its momentum.
Flywheel wheels are as old and established a
technology
as any. They the embodiment of a core
concept of physics, the conservation of momentum.
But today, they are at the heart of
2 ideas that could help spin up the
energy transition.
Hello, and welcome to engineering matters. I'm Ian
Owen. And I'm Johnny Dow. Today, we are
celebrating another winner of the engineering matters awards.
Du, Formally Punch Fly,
First, we'll be looking at their gold champion
win in the net 0 category.
Here we'll see how the ability of flywheel
wheels to be repeatedly and rapidly charged and
discharged is helping support the Energy transition in
construction. And then we'll take a look at
their silver champion award 1 in the innovation
category.
In this category, the flywheel wheels are spinning
at the other end of the electricity grid.
Helping to maintain a consistent power factor and
smooth supply from wind turbines.
We spoke to both guests for this episode
in late 20 23 and early 20 24
during the judging process for the awards.
In that time, the company changed its name
from punch, To Du.
Tobias Commercial, now md of Du fly grew
up in Germany. The country has long had
a leading role in automotive manufacturing, and German
own teams are in pole position in performance
motors sports.
But most of the research and development for
these and other teens takes place in the
Uk around Silver stone.
Keen to develop his career in the sport
he'd moved to the Uk.
And so while I was studying here in
in the Uk,
I came across a startup company called
and they just started up in in January
2007,
and I sent them a letter in February
2 7 to ask if I can do
my master's thesis with with fly. And the
guys who set up flag. They were very
surprised after only 1 months of helping Started
the company to get already a let from
a student.
I wanted to do master's with.
So, yeah they
decided to invite before interview, and
took me on. And so I did my
there. And then instead of going back to
Germany, I actually stayed in the Uk.
A short spell in the Uk to complete
his master's research turned into a permanent move.
But as tobias was putting down roots, Library
was changing gears.
In the early days, we really focus on
Motors sport. Right? So the rules in formula
1 change
to allow hybrid systems to be introduced an
informal 1 racing, and fly grid was started
to develop hybrid 4 formula 1 racing.
We really looked at all of the different
ways how you can store energy that could
be relevant for former 1 racing car.
We choose flywheel because the nature of a
former 1 racing class that it is subjected
to very dynamic 2 cycle.
So formula 1 racing car constantly
accelerates a full power, and then the tribe
slams on the brakes to slow down as
fast as possible,
drives around the corner and goes full throttle
on the on on the again.
Think back to the portrait at her wheel.
Getting the flywheel spinning takes real effort. Those
initial kicks on the edge of the wheel.
As she works a clay, friction slows its
spin. But it only takes a gentle tap
at the center of the flywheel to maintain
its speed.
As a formula 1 car accelerates along a
straight,
it draws power from the engine.
As the driver approaches a corner, they break
turning that energy into heat.
But what if rather than being lost, that
energy could be stored.
That was the vision behind adding a flywheel
to these cars. And so the idea of
of a hybrid system is that. When when
the driver hits the brakes instead of using
the friction breaks, you use the hybrid system
to slow the vehicle down. And in our
case, with a flywheel wheel, we basically accelerated
the flywheel,
to slow the vehicle down. So we exchanged
kinetic energy from the vehicle with kinetic energy
in the flywheel we So as the vehicle
was getting slower, the flywheel was getting faster
and faster and faster.
And like this, you then store an energy
with flywheel that you then can use to
accelerate again
when the car written around the corners.
There are alternatives to flywheel wheels. Typical hybrid
cars use batteries to saw excess energy. But
these take time to charge and have only
a limited number of charging cycles.
What works well with the gentle stop start
of a score rental or commute? Is less
suited to the needs of a high performing
sports car.
If you look at the characteristics of batteries
and flywheel, batteries are much better than flywheel
to store large amount of energy to store
them store that energy for a long period
of time and to discharge that energy over
a long period of to Right? And and
the fly flagships are kind of the opposite.
Fly to install a lot of energy. But
if you need a lot of power and
you need it quickly and you need it
frequently,
then the the flywheel can play to their
advantages, and that's for it works so well
for for these duty cycles.
The chemical battery
typically has
lifetime full charge and discharge cycles of around
3000 cycles.
If you have an electric vehicle that can
do 400 miles from a single charge to
do that 3000 times why you have 600000
miles
lifetime range, your battery
sufficient. Right? But if you have a probably
1 racing car, that does, you know, 500
fracking events
in an hour whatever right? Or you have
industrial applications that are very in dynamic duty
cycles, then it's it's a different story.
As the rules of formula 1 changed, the
use of flywheel hybrids became impossible.
But those industrial
applications suggested a new use for the technology.
The construction industry, they're really innovative, and they're
really trying hard to reduce emissions. Right? And
they obviously operate a lot of heavy machinery
over,
you know, 10:12 hours some construction sites of
operate for 24 hours a day. And so
they have a high consumption of fuel of
fossil fuels. And they also have a lot
of emissions that I associated to that. And
then again, a lot of the construction sites
are in our city centers, where we have
local air quality issues. Right? And so,
these guys in the cons... Guys are girls
in the construction industry are are way
very focused on finding ways to reduce their
impact in terms of emissions and in terms
of fuel consumption.
1 of the large
construction companies
in Scotland and 1 of the leading Scottish
construction companies they approached us regarding a construction
site that they had in Edi edinburgh. And
we work together with a company called S
Fund who a power rental company. So they
typically went, diesel chance that's to to the
construction industry. Right? And
we work together to develop a solution of
how they could which use their,
fuel consumption on that side. And on that
side, they basically had 2 tower cranes 2
big tower that were working hard. And also
a h. So that's a material horse that
goes up and down the side of the
building.
This equipment designed to move construction materials around
a job site shares little at first glance
with a formula 1 car.
But beneath the hood, there is a lot
of similarity.
These are ideal examples of dynamic duty cycles
because basically, every time that h goes ups
up and down. There's a big power spike
when it lifts up basically when it drops
down, right, there's no no power required right,
at that's on on on on gravity.
That initial movement mode when when the lift
starts to overcome that initial friction. Right? That's
a big spike. And then as it moves
up the power also a little bit lower.
And the same is true for the for
the tower brain. So whenever the power lifts
up below that initial movement when it lifted
up, it requires a huge amount of power.
And then when it moves around or drops
the load, the power demand is very low.
And so when you when you recall the
power that's being requested from a diesel sensor,
you get a super spiky
powerful profile. You know, constantly spiking up and
then stopping down again?
That poses a problem for equipment users.
To cover the peak demands of a tower
crane or h,
they must either have a high power grid
connection or use a diesel generator.
Those grid connections are hard if not impossible
to get installed at most construction sites.
And a generator must be big enough and
burn enough fuel to hit those peak demands.
This power profile is more dynamic than a
former 1 racing car. Right? This like constantly
sleepy be when the car is working hard.
With this engine is constantly being asked to
go full power and no power, full power,
no power, full power, no power. And, of
course, you know, when you have a least
chance that and you see that sometimes, when
they have to go from either to full
power, sometimes they tough out the black lot
of smoke of un unbalanced fuel, right? The
dual a diesel engine doesn't like that kind
of dynamic
load application. And so what we do, we
we add a flywheel system,
into the mix. And the flywheel is very
good at dampening out these high power spikes.
Right? And as a result, the diesel engine
can run much closer to the average power
consumption on on on on such a construction
side.
To put that into some perspective, like, 1
of these tower brands, they might have a
peak power demand of around 200 kilowatts.
But the average power demand might only be
20 kilowatts. Right? So factor of 10.
And so it's it's it's a it's a
huge huge difference.
The flywheel can take just enough power from
the generator to set its spinning.
When the crane or h needs a boost
of power to start lifting a load it
draws power from the flywheel.
The flywheel slows, but soon picks up speed
again is the generator or low power grid
connection tops it up.
But because the flywheel is storing energy and
is then deliberately... Able to deliver power on
top of the diesel chips.
You can achieve with a small diesel chances,
the performance of a much, much larger diesel
chances. And if you compare the fuel consumption
of the last hd chance versus the small
1 is our plywood system on, then you
have a massive fuel saving. Typically on the
tower crane, we have usually fuel savings in
the region of 55 percent to 60 percent
at order of Magnitude. So it's it's really
quite significant.
And, I mean, on h, it's even even
more. So we have some h where we
where we choose a fuel consumption by 70,
71 percent.
The built environment contributes to well over a
third of carbon emissions and power used during
construction
accounts for a significant proportion of this.
The construction sector ability to move to electric
power has been hindered by peak demands of
equipment like tower cranes.
By reducing these demands, Du flywheel can slash
the size of generators on sight and eliminate
the need for high our grid connections.
They have been well accepted by the industry
demonstrating their widespread
potential.
Since winning the gold champion engineering matters award,
Du has signed a global
distribution deal with Wolf cra, 1 of the
leading manufacturers of Tower cranes.
Du second entry in the awards demonstrated a
different application for flywheel technology.
In Northern Ireland, they are being used not
to smooth power demand, but power supply.
We have been doing this now
working on climate now for, say 16 years.
Right? I mean,
and we still get people phone up with
applications that we have never thought about.
We got
approached by a company called Iso, about problem
that they were having with turbines in in
Northern Ireland.
Buyers understands the possible uses of flywheel wheels
as well as anyone.
But even he didn't see this potential application.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and III
looked at a lot of different applications with
dynamic duty cycles. Right? From formula 1 cast
to ex
to buses driving in city centers Think everybody
can understand that these kind of applications are
dynamic where constantly the powers high end and
low right, that we buses accelerating was slowing
down. If the next incubator loading a truck
gets constantly moving its very vision. But
to be honest, III
drove passed a lot of turbines in my
life, and I never thought that the turbine,
is a dynamic application. Right? Because when you
look at the turbine,
the speed of the blades
seems to be pretty constant most of the
time. And the speed is also relatively constant.
But, of course, power is related to speed
times torque, and the torque on a wind
turbine is created by the wind pressing against
the blade. And, of course, the wind is
not constant on a wind turbine. It's dusting
up and down. And so when you look
at a power output
on a on a wind turbine, and the
power profile is very dynamic. You know, it's
it's, again, more dynamic than a former 1
racing car. Right? And that's maybe not so
obvious in in in in in the first
place.
Aaron D is Ceo of,
the company that made that approach.
It supplies software to the energy sector and
works closely with Ever run an energy management
company.
We provide software
mainly in the in the wind industry for
monitoring of wind turbines.
We also provide a lot of services to
unlimited to kind of a sister company, 2
Liaison, and and they provide the all our
maintenance for, a lot of the wind turbines
in Northern Ireland.
Many of the wind turbines that ever maintains
are aging.
They are still well capable of delivering power
but as more and more renewables come online
it's become necessary to more closely synchronize their
power output to the grid.
The network operator, N or Northern Ireland electricity
had begun to enforce regulations demanding a very
tight power factor for these turbines.
Everyone, we're tasked with making the older turbines
compliant.
A lot of New York turbines could simply
you could just go in and could modify
those turbines.
Change a few settings, and they would be
compliant with the new requirements.
With these older ones, they were never conceived
with the requirements in mind.
So the... You... A lot of you can
even get comm to the equipment. You know,
So,
initially, we had to provide columns to it.
We had to gwen reverse engineer, you know,
all of the protocols,
and then, remotely communicate to those star turbines?
The turbines had been designed in the early
stages of the renewables revolution. They could not
meet the requirements N I headset. 1 of
those requirements was to control
the par factor on these wind turbines. And
there really wasn't a way that we could
do it within the requirements. So
the requirements were that it it would also
be fast acting,
which would mean that, you know, was Anna
e, that the D o sent the command.
That it would have to respond within a
certain amount of time, to that request.
And and that really just using the installed
equipment, that just wasn't possible.
To maintain the stability of the grid, N
sends requests to supply electricity at a very
narrow power factor. This is measured from 0
to 1.
There's a certain load. The equipment is putting
on the grid,
and
was that's how much true part. How much
of it's actually,
generating in par.
But due to the fact that the current
the voltage me maybe O sync in an
Ac current,
that
that you may not be getting all the
par because 1 cons are sort of all
out.
And,
depending on hai far, I think they are
that's the sort of ratio that you're getting
there. So a... You know, for the east
particular turbines, they they had to be within
not 0.95
to not 0.98,
which is, you know, very close to getting
most of par, I'd Out do it.
But, you know, with
induction motors and generators,
generally, they will none a lot lower,
than not, there maybe from 0.6 to, you
know, 0.7.
And you need Dandy to install capacitors,
which rethink the voltage in the current together,
and and bring that more towards
unity, which is 1 par factor.
Capacitors would allow the wind turbines to sync
with the grid, but they could not meet
all of N n requirements.
You could fix this problem with capacitors essentially.
The trouble was, you know, the fast acting
bit of it,
and also,
not only that but it had to be
more precise. So, you know, if if the
the d was requesting,
not 0.96.
Then, you know, you have to hit that
mark. You have to head it pretty accurately.
Capacitors got lots of headaches like friends, you
know, whenever you discharge, you, you know, you
can't bring it back on again, so straight
away.
You know, so there's lots of inherent problems.
You could manage that with more capacitors, but
the solution was never going to be the
most passionate efficient solution. Very early at home.
We decided that that was not the way
to go in regards to managing this problem.
Explored a range of solutions. But none of
them would allow them to meet N nr
requirements efficiently.
The company had already been talking to Du,
then known as punch about power smoothing. They
had pictured using the flywheel to ensure that
the output from the wind turbines remained steady.
Regardless of weather conditions.
But eyes on soon realized
that they could also be used to meet
N
power factor requirements.
The first time we reached out the punch.
It wasn't actually about the par factor I
little... That was part of the conversation.
It was also in relation to smoothing the
par that's actually to distribute it to the
grid.
And really that's where punch were very unique
because they have a flywheel product
that allows you to absorb energy and then
dispatch it very, very quickly.
And and generally,
without any sort of where either
We, approach
punch fly in order to
provide a solution
for the smoothing of it but they also...
The Centimeters equipment would actually then be able
to meet the requirements of the par factor
correction part of it, which was just fantastic.
The team at Du ray worked with eyes
to adapt the flywheel software to allow them
to quickly shape the power factor of the
turbines, in line with N nr requirements. What
we have ended up with it with is
a solution that is there to beat the
grid requirements, but also
can be extended
to install flywheel,
which will then help move the par going
on the onto the grid,
which, you know, sets us up for the
nature because, the the turbine types are are
quite wall old and they don't have the
same control of the active afar.
That's
you know, the Ones do. So having that
ability to, not only plug control ability for
a power factor, but also in regard to
the output
of the, wind car turbines. I mean, that's
that's just gm changing because that puts us
at a level that, you know,
for the output we are equivalent to a
modern day turbine in regard to good compliance
and and quality.
There's nothing simple when it comes to working
with the electric grid,
but taken on those terms,
this was as simple as it gets.
Of the solution is is it easily plug
and play as you get,
when you're dealing you know, with that type
of equipment
it's that's lots of current ability for coming
from a generator
on a wind. So you're looking maybe, you
know, 7 800 amps that we're talking about
there. So, yeah, all the cable sizes are
massive and we're dealing with the significant industrial
equipment.
But after that, it really is this... Matter
of just collecting up,
installing a few,
measurement devices so that we can control it
all.
And everything else is is is self contained
within,
the flavor unit.
Has adopted the technology
across the wind turbines, they and ever support.
So overall, I think we've installed about a
hundred and 40 panels at this point in
time, we're still installing some at the minute.
But at the minute, we're around a hundred
hundred and 40. So it's this is no
significant amount, of wind turbines.
There's only around,
600 wind turbines in
saint wind turbines in Northern islands. So,
you know, a a significant percentage of them.
And the flywheel wheels aren't just allowing these
turbines to meet N nr power factor requirements.
They also smooth the overall output as winds
rise, full and gas.
Well we shouldn't forget is there's 2. There's
2
solutions to this here, So there's r factor
1, which is fast acting power factor, which
isn't really available with any other sort of
technology.
And then there's also the smoothing of the
power output.
With renewables and and renewable generation, that is
1 of the problems that you have with
it is it's very baggy
It's, you know, it's not always
great to have a
Put which is, you know,
double m might 1 minute and and half
of it the next the next second
you have enough equipment that it sort of
averages itself out.
But
if you if you don't have that on
1 particular subs station, you know, you've only
have 3
wind turbines,
connected to that,
substitution. You know, there's there's a lot of
problems with the up and down of the
par. That you get there, the, you know,
so having a device like this, which can
smooth out that generation, it just makes it
the par more usable.
And that problem exists
direct towards where there's renewable energy.
The flywheel is 1 of our most basic
technologies.
Pot have use them for hundreds if not
thousands of years the smoother spin of their
wheels.
But today, they're playing a new role in
the energy transition. They are slashing power demands
on construction sites by as much as 90
ascent by delivering peak output from a trickle
of supply.
And they're making older wind turbines fit for
the future. While smoothing out their output. Du
is putting an entirely new spin on an
ancient technology.
Entries for the 20 25
engineering matters awards are now open. You can
find all the details on how to enter
at engineering matters dot re dot media slash
awards.
Engineering matters is a production of Re media.
This episode was written and produced by Will
North. Your hosts were me, Johnny Dow and
R Owen.
Sound engineering by Ross Mc mcpherson,
siri supervision by John Young, and the highly
engineered mass that conserve our momentum is Rory
Harris.
Thank you for listening. You can find engineering
matters on all podcast apps on our website,
engineering matters dot ruby dot media
and on Linkedin.