A Flywheel Partnership

SpinDrive and Teraloop partnered to extend the lifespan of flywheels using active magnetic bearings. By minimizing rotor losses in a vacuum and creating an efficient sensor solution, SpinDrive ensured both high performance and cost-effectiveness in this innovative collaboration.

Traditional batteries degrade quickly due to high current charge/discharge cycles. Flywheels, however, handle these fluctuations with unlimited cycles, extending battery life by using them only for long cycles.  

The challenge with kinetic energy storage is in ensuring efficient energy retention with minimal losses. SpinDrive’s Magma X800 AMB controller offeres a stable operation at a high-efficiency point.

“With Spindrive we have been able to design an AMB system with the power draw of only 50W during normal operation, which is a great result for a 250kW machine.” says Markus Merilä CTO of Teraloop.

“AMBs are five times more energy efficient than mechanical bearings and also require less maintenance as there is no physical contact. SpinDrive is specialized in providing tailored active magnetic bearing solutions, which is important for Teraloop due to the unique hubless design of the flywheel.” Merilä explains.

Teraloop’s hubless outer-rotor flywheels provide more energy density compared to the inner-rotor solution. The high rotor diameter results in significant rotor expansion and causes changes in the dynamics. The other challenge is the high gyroscopic effect proportional to the rotational speed that adds coupling between degrees of freedom. All these features require a computationally intensive and adaptive controller. Magma X800 suits best the purpose with its powerful cutting-edge software features.