Have you ever seen a giant wind turbine standing idle on an otherwise windy
day? I come across several turbines during my daily commute and have wondered
why these lazy turbines aren’t doing their jobs. I have to work, why does this
turbine just get to sit around all day! Do they just break all of the time or
something? Well, it turns out I was being a bit too pessimistic about wind
power technology.
In reality, the turbines are idle because they’ve met energy demands.
Currently, renewable energy sources must curtail generation whenever the amount
of electricity they produce exceeds user demand. Instead of continuing to take
advantage of windy conditions, the turbine must shut down until further
production is needed. Solar is in the exact same situation. Whirl Energy is
building a solution to keep energy resources churning even after demand is met.
Whirl Energy’s challenge is to develop an efficient mechanical system for
storing surplus power in order to maximize the generation of electricity from
clean, renewable sources. Storing this energy in an electric battery is costly,
so Whirl Energy is turning to a mechanical solution.
As a proof-of-concept, the Company has built a 1/10-scale prototype of a submerged
buoy system, which uses surplus power to crank buoys underwater to a depth of
roughly 100 meters. Whenever power is needed, the buoys are slowly released and
their buoyancy force supplies stored electricity as they rise to the surface.
To bring the first commercial-scale buoyant mechanical batteries to life,
Whirl Energy turned to SOLIDWORKS. The Company relies on SOLIDWORKS design,
structural analysis, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, and product
data management (PDM) solutions to develop an innovative, mechanical,
submerged-buoy approach to storing excess electrical power generated from
renewable sources.
“SOLIDWORKS is intuitive and advanced, particularly with its FEA [finite
element analysis] integration,” Whirl Energy President Saben Murray explains.
“SOLIDWORKS provides the sophisticated features that allow us to simulate the
unique mechanics involved with winching five-meter-diameter buoys 100 meters
underwater.”
In addition to modeling the submerged buoy system, validating its
performance, and building a functional prototype, Whirl Energy leverages
SOLIDWORKS visualization tools to demonstrate how the system works. “Without
SOLIDWORKS, we would have a much harder time communicating what the system is
and how it operates,”
“It’s critical that investors and prospective customers understand what we’re
creating,” he continues. “It’s one thing to tell them about a power storage
system that utilizes concrete anchors, underwater winches, tethers, pulleys,
trusses, and buoys. However, showing them a photorealistic image of the
complete system rendered with PhotoView 360 is much more effective for
communicating how the system will actually work and for generating support for
building a full-scale, commercial application.”
Click
here to read the full story
behind Whirl Energy’s development of the world’s first commercial-scale buoyant
mechanical batteries and view Whirl Energy’s work in eDrawings.
