Chemical free storage for cleaner hybrids

Hybrids are here to stay

Over the past decade the heavy hybrid vehicle industry has emerged giving end users a cleaner alternative. Vehicle OEM's are now starting to consider flywheels as a more durable, cheaper alternative to batteries or ultra-capacitors for hybridizing medium and heavy duty vehicles. With no replacement cost and no end of life disposal costs, flywheels provide a real return on investment for the end user.

On-road flywheel energy storage solutions

For fleet managers and end users

Using flywheels as an alternative to batteries in hybrid vehicles has the following benefits:

Benefit	Description
Lower lifetime cost	Batteries ultimately require replacement due to degradation of power, capacity and efficiency. This means they reach an end of life state where they no longer are able to meet minimum vehicle specifications. Conditions such as low or high temperature can accelerate these conditions. A flywheel does not experience any degredation and with minimal periodic maintenance will easily last the lifetime of the vehicle. This means there is no replacement cost and therefore a significantly lower lifetime cost to the end user.
Chemical free	Batteries contain hazardous materials that can be corrosive (C), flammable (F), harmful (Xn), irritant (Xi), dangerous for the environment (N) or toxic (T). Responsible disposal at end of life means paying for hazardous materials shipping to an appropriately equipped recycling facility in order to pay for managing end of life treatment. Flywheels are made primarily of benign common metals—steel, aluminum, copper—that offer high residual value at end of life.
High voltage safety	Many battery chemistries cannot be fully discharged without causing some irreparable damage to the battery pack. Even if the battery is not harmed by full discharge, a large battery pack can take many hours to fully discharge. For first responders and maintenance personnel, a battery represents a high voltage source that cannot be easily or quickly disabled. To work around the lethal voltage presented by the battery pack requires special training. On the other hand, flywheels can be fully discharged and thereby remove the high voltage exposure risk to first responders and maintenance personnel.

If any of the above benefits appeal to you, please let your vehicle OEM know about us or share this page on your favourite social media network.

For original equipment and transmission manufacturers

Flywheels can provide significant system wide benefits to your vehicle design in comparison with other energy storage systems. The following is a non-exhaustive list of these potential benefits:

Benefit	Description
Ability to "right size" power and energy	Batteries and ultra-capacitors are produced in cells. The voltage, power and energy available in a cell are fixed. Many cells can be arranged, in series and parallel, to provide a desired DC link voltage, or power rating, or energy rating. The consequence is that for a desired rating of one there is a fixed proportion of the others. This leads to non-optimized storage systems. In contrast, with flywheels the DC link voltage, power and energy can be independently specified to provide precisely the voltage, power and energy ratings that are desired. This is because in a flywheel there are independent components that provide the fundamental performance characteristic. The DC link voltage rating is controlled by the inverter. The power rating comes from the motor/generator. The energy storage rating comes from the flywheel rotor.
No oversizing for component end of life	To overcome capacity fade, efficiency fade and power fade, batteries and ultra-capacitors need to be oversized to meet performance specifications at end of life. With a flywheel what you get at the beginning of life is what you get at the end of life.
Supports higher system voltage	Our flywheel systems will comfortably operate up to 800 VDC. This may provide the opportunity for some system level optimization such as reducing the size (and therefore cost) of all the remaining components in the hybrid drive system.
Vibration tolerant	We have extensively tested our flywheel systems in terms of tolerance of road load vibrations and off axis vehicle dynamics. Full details are in our performance verification white paper, but in summary our existing systems are tolerant of 16% grade, 1 Hz - 20 Hz random vibration and pitch or roll rates of 10 degrees per second.

There are many other benefits that may be applicable. Please read our Flywheel FAQ, browse our downloads or email info@blueprintenergy.com for more information.

Technical specifications

Performance verification

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