Well, here I still find myself in an, ever increasingly, brain drained and overinflated South Africa, managing well in making ends meet in the research environment. UCT Power Electronics Group You will tour the planets on a comet but you may not return to earth Ok, with that settled, I am currently involved with my PhD study in Electrical Engineering. In the several years of official and non official research I've come to know that we need to store energy in some useful form. Chemical batteries are at their best terribly inefficient, short lived and expensive.
Mechanical batteries offer some promise, but comes with a good share of challenges of it's own.
In laymen's terms, I'm building a high efficieny brushless DC motor with a big inertia and low losses. The electricity is fed into the device and the flywheel spins up. What we have achieved here at Cape Town University is a cost effective, high energy unit that can serve domestic, business and motor industries to name a few.