Off the Grid Energy Solutions

Background

Off the Grid Energy Solutions is a company name that my group and I came up with for our Mechanical Design class. The final project had demanded that we design a product that would follow certain Design criteria that we ourselves were to decide upon and have approved by our professor. Together we came up with the idea of designing a Mechanical Battery flywheel. This page details the results of our idea.

Here are links to the formal report and power-point presentation for the Off the Grid flywheel project.

FINAL REPORT

Below is our group's final proposed summary for the project including all the necessary criteria we had set out to abide by.


Deus Ex’s OTG Energy 11/3/16

Ben Chaimongkol

Khalid Al-Tailji

Michael Villanueva

Berean Purther

Off-The-Grid Energy Solutions

“A Kinetic Approach to Energy”

Problem Statement

Building effective energy storage systems is one of the primary obstacles facing the world of energy production. In recent years, the world has been moving further and further away from traditional energy sources and energy storage and more towards alternatives. It is our job as engineers to constantly be looking for ways to improve the old and innovate the new.

Proposed Solution

We recognize the necessity to develop energy storage systems that are more reliable, and more environmentally friendly than traditional lead acid-cell batteries. Our energy storage system design will consist of a rotating metal shaft that can harness energy input in the form of rotational kinetic energy. This system will be for household use and can either be hooked up to alternative energy sources (wind, solar, etc), or will use grid power during off-peak hours. This design is meant to be a 100% recyclable eco-friendly version of the Tesla Powerwall.

Project Objectives

- Design a mechanical system to store energy in kinetic form. - Make system design comprised of recyclable parts. (Metal, Plastic, etc)

- Make system affordable and practical for household small-scale applications

- Make sure design is safe and straightforward to use. - Achieve cost and benefit comparable to Tesla’s PowerWall.

Design Criteria (from highest to lowest priority)

- FOS of 1.5

- Moving parts enclosed (safety precaution)

- Can be powered by renewable energy sources and grid energy during off-peak hours (9 p.m. - 8 a.m.)

- 100% recyclable

- Within 10% of Tesla’s Powerwall energy storage capacity of 7 kWh

- Efficiency greater than or equal to 80%

- System occupies less than or equal to 1 m^3 Assumptions

- Generator/Motor with efficiency of 90% is provided

- System will be placed indoors

- Delivery/Installation of the system is taken care of

- System will not be disconnected for more than 24 hours

- System will be regularly serviced

- System noise is < 80 dB

To the right is a link to the excel spreadsheet used to forego the necessary variables and calculations for a safe and viable product

Excel.xlsx.xlsx