Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
(OP)
Has anyone had experiance with industrial sized flywheel UPS systems? My company is plauged by service line spikes, brown outs, blinks and storm related outages. I understand storm related outages but our power company is unable to correct or explain the brown outs and blinks which raise hell with our many 3 phase hydraulic power supplies. We use several 10 to 15 KVA battery based UPS for our electronics but I need to keep the 3 phase 480Vac up long enough to absorb the blinks or for the generator to switch on in an outage. I've just started to research this subject and found that EATON has a 750KVA flywheel system so there must be others.
Thanks in advance to anyone able to share knowledge on this subject
Thanks in advance to anyone able to share knowledge on this subject






RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
There is a company that is noted for flywheel storage generators. Not Eaton.. The name escapes me.. Someone will remember.
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
The rotary designs from Piller, Eurodiesel and Hitec (ex-Holec) types are all based around a specialised rotating machine which provides the energy store coupled via clutch to a diesel engine. The smallest of these units is about 250kW and they go up to about 6MW or so, maybe a little larger. These have good fault-clearing capability and motor starting capacity. This type is popular with the major financial institutions in The City where they are typically deployed in an N+1 redundant arrangement.
My opinion, based on what little I know of your application, would be to look at the rotary + engine types mentioned in my second paragraph for your application.
Where are you located? You need to look at support from the manufacturer or their agents: the best UPS in the world is useless if you have a problem and your nearest support is on another continent.
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I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem...
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
http://www.activepower.com/
This is the company that makes the CAT UPS systems.
Based on your description, this is likely a good solution from our experience.
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
Only the guilty have something to hide!!
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I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem...
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
I live and work in Western PA and he have had power problems since the 90's when I started here. Our most common problem is when we lose power for just 5 - 10 milli-Seconds, our pumps shut off. This can happen in a storm, a calm sunny day and even the middle of the night. Once we had a squirrel fry while stretching from one power line to the next.
I found this paper from the US Dept. of Energy that everyone should find interesting www.eere.energy.gov/femp/ it gives example applications and pro / cons of flywheels. Thanks again everyone!!!
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
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Sometimes I wake up Grumpy.
Other times I just let her sleep!
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
We run high performance servo hydraulic actuators with these pumps and it doesn't take much of a motor RPM drop to affect the hydraulic pressure even with accumulators on the pressure line.
Thanks again everyone for your input!!
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
Rugged
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
Does your system have a hydraulic accumulator local to each actuator? A remote accumulator isn't much help - short runs of full-size pipework right up to the actuator is ideal.
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Sometimes I wake up Grumpy.
Other times I just let her sleep!
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
http://www.hitecusa.com
or
http://www.hitecups.com
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
I'll admit that I could be mistaken about 5 -10 ms, Hold6448, but if you blink your eyes at the instant our power blinks you will miss it. It is just long enough for an office computer UPS to beep a short alarm or a hydraulic power supply to stop instantly, there is no ride through momentum that I've ever seen.
We've had beautiful weather since the middle of last week and our power blinked on the evenings of August the 30th, 31st, mornings of September 1st, 2nd and the 3rd causing all of the running hydraulic power supplies to shut off and the power company has no explanation for why it's happening.
I like what I read about the HiTec ride through system, riessen, to bad their USA HQ is in Texas.
Thanks again everyone for your valuable input...'8ball
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
Big recommendation for the EuroDiesel and Pillar UPS designs. Not sure how well supported they are in the US.
When you say the hydraulic pump stops, do you mean the contactor drops out and the pump stops, or that the pump trips the overload or breaker as a result of abrupt deceleration and acceleration?
You might want to consider hiring a disturbance analyser and monitoring the mains supply. That way you will know what problem you are fighting, even if you don't know the cause, and from then we may be able to help a bit more or you may even be able to go back to your utility with a formal objection to the quality of supply. To do that you'll need hard facts about the problem which the disturbance analyser will help you obtain.
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Sometimes I wake up Grumpy.
Other times I just let her sleep!
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
I'm saying that the contactor drops open and the motor stops immeadiatly. I've never used a disturbance analyser, would you recommend a Mfg and model number?....'8ball
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
If you don't follow this course you are cruising for a severe bruising. Why? Because you could spend a million bucks for a solution only to have the power company fix the problem eventually anyway, or have the problem change character so your fix ceases to be a fix.
Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.- http://www.flaminsystems.com
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
Contactors dropping out on motors that big... sounds more like a 100ms interruption to me. 5-10ms dropout time is definitely not something you would see on a European 95kW contactor which is a near approximation to 125HP. US contactors aren't so far different as far as I recall. If the period of the disturbance is a few cycles then many possible causes open up. Sub-cycle problems don't have many causes because few pieces of utilty equipment are that fast.
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Sometimes I wake up Grumpy.
Other times I just let her sleep!
RE: Flywheel UPS, 500 - 1000KVA
Excellent suggestion to hire a third party analyzer, I will present that at the next meeting as a first step "identifying the problem"..................'8ball