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Matt and Sean talk about flywheels, mechanical energy storage, and something unexpected that flew out of the comments.
Two Bit Davinci video about the flywheel bus: https://youtu.be/LHyUDihL_FQ?si=xVp7qfUP82jm6wQl
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How 40-Ton Spinning Wheels Are Saving The Power Grid https://youtu.be/Z95t-f-0IjI?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean talk about flywheels, mechanical energy storage, and something unexpected that flew out of the comments.
Two Bit Davinci video about the flywheel bus: https://youtu.be/LHyUDihL_FQ?si=xVp7qfUP82jm6wQl
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How 40-Ton Spinning Wheels Are Saving The Power Grid https://youtu.be/Z95t-f-0IjI?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Follow us on X: @stilltbdfm @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/undecidedmf
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Creators and Guests
What is Still To Be Determined?
Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.
Sean Ferrell: Today on Still To Be Determined, we're talking about videos that lead to spin offs. You might not get it now, but you will. Hi everybody. Welcome to Still to Be Determined. This is the podcast that follows up on Undecided with Matt Ferrell. I sadly am not Matt Ferrell and I say sadly often when we start this show as a joke. And I know all of you laugh. I can hear the laughter. But today I say it more out of selfishness because I wish I was Matt Ferrell. Because Matt Ferrell does not have a cold. Sean Ferrell has a cold.
Matt Ferrell: That's right, I'm fine.
Sean Ferrell: Sean Ferrell's normally lucid tones are a little gravelly and where his nose used to be is now just a bunch of individual cells barely holding on. I'll try and make it through this without sneezing or coughing or falling asleep, but I make no promises. As I mentioned, this is the follow up podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell. With me, as always, is the aforementioned Matt Ferrell. Matt, I already let the cat out of the bag. You're not sick, but other than that, how you doing?
Matt Ferrell: The fact I don't have a cold. Sean, I am very happy.
Sean Ferrell: We are going to take a look at Matt's most recent in a minute, which is his talking about flywheels. This is a topic that has come up before on his channel and on this channel, but there's a new take and an unexpected follow up which I will be honest, I'm not even fully informed about what we will be talking about. Normally I'm the one who's helping pilot the podcast and choosing a course, but this week Matt was just like, oh, guess what? Something it happened and we got to talk about it, so we're going to talk about it. Before we get into that, let's take a look at the mailbag from episode 295. This was our conversation about aluminum batteries and we had a bit of a conversation about the grid and power supplies. And there was this from thegle who jumped into the comments to say for the discussion about the grid and supply and whatnot, ERCOT in Texas only shows the fuel mix each day, hub pricing, et cetera, all on their website. I've been watching the fuel mix religiously as I think it's pretty interesting to see how solar, wind and storage all interact. The batteries flatten the peaks in mornings and evenings when prices are highest and look to be charging during the day and at night when prices are lowest. In fact, I think that the battery systems are now a high enough draw that they're keeping prices at or above $0 all the time when they would have dipped into the negative territory in previous years. So we've talked about this before, Matt, about how the grid and power companies, it's not equal across the country or around the globe as to how they manage all of this. And we talked about in some places the possibility of actually earning rebates effectively because you are putting more energy into the grid than you're actually taking out.
This seems to be the power company figuring out a way to keep the floor effectively at at floor level and not allowing people to dip into the basement by storage and evening things out at peaks is the Texas description that has been given in this comment. Is this becoming more common or do you think that we remain an uneven and strangely hodgepodge collection of policies across the country?
Matt Ferrell: Unfortunately, it's uneven. It's not par for the course. Like ERCOT is doing some interesting things. ERCOT is actually surprisingly progressive when it comes to solar and renewables on their grid and energy storage systems. And the political climate would make you think that's not the case. But it is, because cheap energy generation, money to be made, energy companies are going to do what energy companies do, which is try to turn a profit. So they're going to go that direction because that's where the cheap energy is. But this comment actually highlights something that I love, which is a lot of the misinformation and people that push back against renewables are like this area of the country that has a huge amount of wind turbines. The energy prices go negative, which throws everything into turmoil and it causes all these problems. And while that may be true in the short term, like right now, it's happening because things are growing so fast and in ways that we're experiencing for the first time in this transition. And so we're finding our way through it. And it's not that it's an inherent problem of wind or solar, it's that we just have to figure out how to manage it properly to make sure that that doesn't happen. So it's. I love this comment because it comes back to the whole idea of there are ways to manage this. If you're smart about how you implement it and you make sure you have proper storage systems, you can, you can take all that into account and prevent those megawatt hour costs from going negative.
Sean Ferrell: We had a bit of a conversation around what you might do if you, like me, have a gas stove and you want to move on from that. The stray wolf jumped in with a good suggestion to keep in mind, important if you swap from gas to electric permanently, that you cap the gas line. A gas stove dose does, does leak a very small amount of gas all the time. And if you're swapping to get rid of the problems with gas and purify the air, you need it capped. That's a really good comment. Thank you for that reminder. There was also a comment which I didn't clip, which said to me, Sean, you're nuts. You know, gas isn't good for you, but you're not doing anything about it. Why aren't you switching? And then he went on to explain the affordability of his I think it was a convection, convection oven and very well received. Appreciate the comment. However, some of us are renters and we don't get to choose what appliances we have, so.
Matt Ferrell: But Sean, you know, you could do. You could buy an induction, just countertop little element.
Sean Ferrell: I'll let you, the next time you visit me, I'll let you find the counter space for that.
Matt Ferrell: I know your kitchen, your counter space is about the size of what this thing would be. Yeah, exactly.
Sean Ferrell: And then from our conversation last week, the best worst comment from the weathered elder who jumped in to say, Sean, you may have just strengthened the economy. Aluminum tin foil hats equals gullibility. Salt equals skepticism. A new industry in which employees wear a tinfoil hat with a wire attached while another wire is attached to their skin. They watch YouTube videos all day and take grains of salt as inspired. The contrast should make them living batteries. Sometimes I roll my eyes at myself, weathered elder. I don't roll my eyes at that at all. I appreciate it. It was a great image. And given my proclivity for really weird imagery in some of my writing, I may in fact steal this. It's kind of a comical matrix, isn't it? Instead of like humans being in pods wired up as batteries, they're just watching YouTube with all the electrodes and it generates the power.
Matt Ferrell: I always. I was picturing like a scene from Brazil merged with the Matrix. It's like human batteries. Yes, but from the movie Brazil.
Sean Ferrell: Yep. I loved it. Thank you for that comment. On now to our discussion about Matt's most recent about Mechanical batteries, how 40 ton spinning wheels are saving the power grid. We've talked about. We talked about this just a couple of weeks ago, if not last week, and you hinted that this episode was on its way. So I was excited to see this one, just because the physicality of this technology, the simplicity of it, it's really, it taps a vein, which is this kind of, like, retro future that I really enjoy. There were people in the comments. We'll get to those in which people tapped into the same energy, no battery pun intended. Like this one from Wayne, who says at 12 minutes, 29 seconds in your video, they store and release energy quickly, but it's not for a long time. So it's basically a mechanical capacitor, is that.
Matt Ferrell: I will say, I will say, yes, I think that analogy is great, but there's gonna be a whole bunch of, like, people pushing their glasses. A capacitor is very different from a flywheel. It's not even close to the same thing. It's like, yes, yes, but for the idea of something that can release energy and a lot of it very quickly. Yes, it has a lot in common with the capacitor.
Sean Ferrell: So, yeah, yep, it's really, it's. It's fascinating.
Matt Ferrell: Bring it on. The comments, everybody. Bring it on.
Sean Ferrell: There was this from Thomas, who again, the retro future. There was a time when people thought about using flywheels to power cars and buses. The math almost worked out, but then batteries got better and better. There were buses with flywheels for regenerative braking in Stockholm, even if they were abandoned fairly quickly, as I recall. Are you familiar with the history of this kind of technology? And is it revisitable in a place where it's like, well, you got that, you got these city buses and they're running around on now clean energy. They're using electricity or they're using. In some cases, like here in the city, they run on a kind of natural gas as opposed to liquid. Liquid gas, yeah. So you end up with, is it possible that somebody would be like, well, let's start using some of these flywheels in here to take the burden off the electricity or the, the gas energy? Is that something that you. I wouldn't say.
Matt Ferrell: Would you bet on, but no, I would 100% not bet on it. And the reason why is, like, it is a thing. It was tried. The Stockholm bus thing is a really fascinating story. And if anybody wants to watch this, I'll put. I'll try to remember to put a link to it in the description. A friend of mine, Ricky from Two Bit Da Vinci, has an entire video about that bus, about the flywheel, about why it was designed the way it was, how it worked, and kind of why it failed and went away. That's part of the reason why I would say, this ain't coming back. It's like, it doesn't make sense today because, like, we have incredible batteries. We have incredible super capacitors that take up far less space than a flywheel would in a bus because it took up a lot of space in the bus. And then the reason why you practice be hauling around, it's. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of reasons why it wouldn't make sense today, but it was an interesting experiment. It did function. It did what it was supposed to do. It just didn't catch on for kind of obvious reasons.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: But it's a really fascinating story.
Sean Ferrell: Fukuokai International wrote in to say, and if I mangle that in any way, I apologize. But Fukuokai says I followed flywheels for 45 years. Back in the day, the Soviets had a project for ultra thin systems that span that spin at insane speeds. They used U.S. videotape of all things for the mass. This had the advantage that if there was a failure, the tape would unravel and lose speed as it spread out. If it did not vaporize, they could reuse it. I think it was abandoned mainly due to the costs and, and difficulty of obtaining tapes. What I like the idea that the technology was abandoned not because it didn't work, but just because the Soviet Union had a difficult time getting a hold of tapes. Hey, come to any goodwill anywhere in the US you're going to find lots of VCR tapes. Let's get these flywheels spinning. I love the idea that in a catastrophic failure people would be standing around white lab coats with their clipboards and their pens watching something and then somebody would be like something seems to be going wrong and the result is just. There's just a bunch of.
Matt Ferrell: It gives a whole new meaning to the Betamax versus VHS debate.
Sean Ferrell: It's literally a Soviet experiment. It would be red tape. They'd be, they'd be, they'd be smothered in red tape.
Matt Ferrell: This movie is writing itself.
Sean Ferrell: That's all I have to say it is. I've got flywheel buses, I've got giant flywheels made of videotape. It's. I mean, I love it. So finally our best worst comment. Alex jumped into the comments to say that the flywheels sounds like a of lot, lot of circular reasoning. But we can circle back to that debate. In any case, it got my head spinning. Wow, Alex.
Matt Ferrell: Oh God.
Sean Ferrell: Slow clap, slow clap on that one.
Matt Ferrell: That is next level pun.
Sean Ferrell: That's a three.
Matt Ferrell: Well done.
Sean Ferrell: That's a. It's possibly even a three and a halfer. That's pretty good.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I think it is a three and a half. Er, yeah. So the Olympics are punning.
Sean Ferrell: Normally this would be when Sean would say, hey, everybody, did we miss anything in this conversation? Jump into the comments and let us know. But if I said that right now, Matt would have to jump into the comments because there is a part of this story that we haven't talked about yet. There was an upshot to Matt dropping this video. A conversation started in the comments on the video. Am I correct in remembering the day of the video drop that you dropped the video? And there was. Very quickly there was a conversation that started. Take us through what happened and take us through what has come of this since then.
Matt Ferrell: Okay, so within hours of the video being up, somebody dropped a comment that said, Salt Lake City International Airport has nothing to do with Torus. And in fact, they have sent a cease and desist order to Torus to stop promoting the fact that they're doing something with the airport. To which I replied, do you have a link or anything online? Because I didn't. Nothing about this comes up online. Do you have any kind of information? His response was, no, I don't have a link to it because it's not online. But all you have to do is go to Google Maps and you'll see that there's no imagery of any kind of like, installation like this anywhere around the airport. To which that raised an eyebrow. Because I'm like, that's not proof of anything because it doesn't mean it has to be like, literally on the airport grounds. And how long ago is that overhead image taken? Like, that's not gonna be proof of anything.
Sean Ferrell: That's a list of reasons.
Matt Ferrell: But that made me assume that, yeah, the person that left that comment is clearly probably affiliated with the airport in some fashion, because otherwise how would they know this is going on? I'm not saying within. Yeah, within probably about two hours of that exchange with him in the comments, I got an email from somebody in the communications department from, from the Salt Lake City International Airport saying, could you please issue a retraction on your description saying that the airport has no affiliation with Torus and Torus is not doing what they're saying. And then they told me in the email, we've reached out to Torus to try to clarify this and get to the bottom of this as well. So I immediately went to the description and pinned comment and put a little thing saying, kind of like, correction, something's happening here. More information coming. But the airport saying that Torus has nothing to do with the airport. Happenstance was my video had been out for a few hours and I got an email from Torus saying, hey, we saw your video. Which this always freaks me out, Sean, because my video has literally been out for probably three or four hours. And the airport's reaching out to me and the company, one of the companies I spoke about is reaching out to me saying thanks so much. You know, they just want to kind of like say hello. And I responded to them saying, glad you liked the video. But they're claim the airport's reaching out to me, telling me that I have to retract this stuff because evidently you don't have any kind of relationship with the airport. To which they responded, that's not the case. We need to dig into this. We'll get you an answer by the end of the day. And then by the end of the day my contact at Torus came back and said they're still getting to the bottom of it.
And they asked me some follow up questions because they're still trying to narrow down what was going on. And around this time is when I started to piece together what I think has happened. I think this is the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing at the airport. I think what happened is, I don't have the specifics because I have gotten follow up from Torus since then and I'm waiting to hear back from the airport for confirmation. But Torus has basically said they, they figured out the communication snafu, everything's fine. Like, cause like it was literally people not knowing what they were talking about.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: So it seems to me like maybe Torus has a deal with the utility or the energy supplier of the airport and maybe not the airport directly, but these things are being tested. And so the airport wasn't aware that this stuff was actually happening for the airport, even though it is happening to the airport.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: I have a feeling that's probably what's going on here.
Sean Ferrell: A utility provider could very well be talking to the airport and say, we're going to provide you X amount of energy at X price over X period of time and never say, and some of that is going to be from a flywheel installation that we're putting down the road five miles that you won't even know exists. I could see that that could happen.
Matt Ferrell: Or it could just be that the, the airport is such a massive operation that literally like the engineering department of the airport didn't want the communications. Communications department. No. So it's like it could have also been that. So whatever it is, everybody's talked to each other now and it seems to be that they're all up to speed. But I thought it was a really kind of funny just how quickly it like snowballed.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: And made me go, oh, is there something seriously wrong with my video? Doesn't look like there is, but it's still kind of unfolding. When I do have the final word, like if I can get confirmation from the airport again about everything's good, I'll put a pin put it into the pinned comment for the latest update.
Sean Ferrell: That's all very interesting and I appreciate the fact that you said that everybody was getting up to speed on the flywheel. Well done for that. Now I'll say it. Listeners, viewers, what did you think about this conversation? Was there anything you feel like was left out or anything that you wanted to jump on? Let us know in the comments. As always, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends, those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. They help inform not only this show, but also help steer Undecided with Matt Ferrell the Mothership. If you'd like to support the show more directly, you can go to stilltbd.fm or you can click the join button right here on YouTube. Either way allows you to become a direct supporter. You can throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy business of Sean trying to figure out if he's actually making sense. Because the cold. The cold, the call. Thank you everybody for taking to watch or listen. We'll talk to you next time.