alt.energy.renewable

I've looked at this concept before and based on an idea I had seen many
years ago at a US Naval base in Northern Ireland where they had a large (7T)
flywheel spinning a standby generator. In the event of a power loss the
flywheel would drive the standby generator for almost 24 hours thus
maintaining power to the base. The principle was that once the flywheel was
up to speed it would only need kicking every now and again to keep it there
thereby reducing the energy needed to keep it turning.

Applying this to this discussion if you had an alternator driven by the
flywheel which in turn charged a bank of batteries then a smaller electric
motor could be used to maintain the flywheel at speed. This motor could be
powered by a single battery which could be charged by a small wind turbine
or a small array of solar panels. If the single battery was fully charged
they the charging circuit could be switched to the main bank of batteries.

A suitable flywheel might be from an old lister steam engine about 24" in
diameter and perhaps 3 - 4" thick. Granted there would be losses along the
drive mechanism but the momentum in the flywheel would drive the alternator
and reduce the impact of load.

Just a thought
--
Tom

"SteveC" wrote in message
news:47cc185e$0$4060$9a566e8b@news.aliant.net...
> if you could somehow power a car alternator to run, could you charge a
> bank of batteries somehow? Like using solar power to power an electric
> motor, which in turn, turns the alternator which charges up the batteries?
>
> Time to hit the junkyard for a couple of cheap alternators for an
> experiment!!
>