Roy J. Tellason said the following to MIKE ROSS on the subject of
Engine Design (26 Sep 97  21:45:17)
 RJT> MIKE ROSS wrote in a message to Alec Cameron:
 MR> Don't forget hybrid technology. This increases the usage
 MR> efficieny out of every drop of gas by an IC engine a whole lot.
 MR> Because it runs the IC engine at constant speed at its most
 MR> efficient RPM, driving an electrical generator to charge a
 MR> battery and/or flywheel, it can cut gas consumption
 MR> dramatically. I heard 1000 miles per tankful using a turbine IC
 MR> engine for a typical size U.S.A. car on a home power tv show
 MR> recently.
 RJT> Never mind a typical car,  I like mine bigger!
 RJT> Hybrid systems like that have always been of some interest to me,  but
 RJT> you only ever seem to hear of them being done by folks who spend a
 RJT> *lot* of time and effort to put some sort of a prototype vehicle
 RJT> together and that seems to be about the extent of it.
 RJT> I would like to know what it would take to retrofit an existing
 RJT> vehicle to support a hybrid system.  Assuming that you want to use the
 RJT> existing engine for starters,  it'd seem to me that the transmission
 RJT> and the rest of the drive train would have to be removed,  and that
 RJT> the suspension would have to be modified at least to some extent --
 RJT> with that rear axle gone it'd need *something* in there different.
 RJT> Then there's the matter of motors to drive the rear wheels,  and
 RJT> support for them.
 [...]
 RJT> Has anyone offered a retrofit kit of any kind for this purpose?
On the home power show I saw they interviewed this fellow called Roston,
who was the founder of Compaq. He has started a company called Roston
Motors which has developed a power-train using a turbine/generator
driven hybrid system. It is supposed to retrofit easily into any
existing chassis. The drive proper is an electric motor at each wheel.
The whole kit is very modular.
Overall this is an old technique which is the basic principle of
diesel-electric locomotives but which is being applied by this
powertrain to an ordinary car. Oh, almost forgot, the rear differential
cavity is taken up by a carbon fibre flywheel.
 MR> Gas/electric stations could store energy by trickle charging
 MR> large underground flywheels.
 RJT> I've heard mention before of using flywheels to store energy,  and
 RJT> there are a couple of things that are going to need to happen before
 RJT> it gets to where this is a realistic option.  One is that they need
 RJT> _magnetic_ bearings,  ones that effectively suspend the flywheel with
 RJT> minimum friction loss.  The other is that you've gotta package the
 RJT> thing in a vacuum.  I haven't heard of either of these ever actually
 RJT> being done,  though. Do you know of any actual work,  as opposed to
 RJT> theoretical speculations,  having been done on this stuff?
I think this has already been figured out. Space satellites come to
mind. These use electrically driven flywheels to orient themselves. I
guess one simply only has to scale the same devices into industrial
sized capacities. This sort of upscaling has been done before on proof
of concept inventions.
 MR> Then quickly charge a customer's car without any heavy drain to
 MR> the grid. Thus no need to upgrade the electric grid.
 RJT> I disagree with this point.  While you can shift the loads around,
 RJT> the overall effect is *still* going to be a much higher demand for
 RJT> energy than what's currently being used.  That was the whole point of
 RJT> the article I read.
It's not simply a question of shifting loads around but rather of using
the unused "renewable" capacity during off peak periods. Of course not
with fuel driven generation but with aeolian, solar, hydro, tidal, etc.
I agree the total consumption would go up but peak numbers need not.
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30
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