By Paul Homewood
Mad Miliband did no tell us how much his crazy plan to build giant flywheels up and down the country would cost, but Paul Burgess came up with these numbers:
So that 250 kW job would cost a total of about $75000, assuming $300/kW.
If we convert that to £300/kW and assume that Miliband’s flywheels would be needed to replace 30GW of gas and coal plants, we would be looking at a total of some £9 billion. The idea, after all, is that they are needed to provide system inertia, which is currently only provided by spinning generators – gas, coal and nuclear principally.
I seem to recall reading that battery storage would also be required, in order to smooth delivery of power; this could add to those theoretical costs.
It seems unlikely that flywheels would last more than a few years, certainly not without plenty of maintenance. Either way, the cost of flywheels would be considerable.