What is kers

For example, stopping a bicycle, a car or a train is all about removing its kinetic energy. Most commonly kinetic energy is removed using friction brakes, turning the kinetic energy into heat energy that goes towards warming up our planet that little bit more. With KERS, that energy is not lost but stored somewhere to be used to drive the car — that somewhere could be in a battery chemical energy in a flywheel mechanical , in an accumulator hydraulic and in many others ways too.

This stored energy can then be reused to give extra power to the engine with the regulations allowing maximum KERS power of 60kW and energy release of kJ in any one lap. Why did Renault choose the battery option? When the KERS project began, the first priority was to study all possible energy store solutions. It was a tough call deciding between batteries and a pure mechanical flywheel, but the battery solution was more promising and offers the potential for adapting this technology for road cars over the next ten years.

External link to. Skip 3 photos in the image carousel and continue reading. Turn on Javascript to see all the available pictures. Advertisement - Page continues below. Top Gear Newsletter Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Sorry, something went wrong Please try again. Turn on JavaScript to see all related content. Promoted Content. In fact, teams were so convinced of the advantage of KERS that many of the teams competing for the constructors title changed their cars mid-season to stay competitive in the title race.

There are two main implementations of the KERS system and they differ in how the energy is stored. The electrical KERS uses an electromagnet to transfer the kinetic energy to electric potential energy that is eventually converted to chemical energy that is stored in a battery. It then redelivers the stored energy to the drive train by powering a motor. The electric KERS was what many teams started off trying to implement into their cars.

However, the battery used to store the energy is very prone to battery fires and can cause electric shocks. The mechanical implementation, shown in Fig. To harvest the energy upon braking, the system uses the braking energy to turn a flywheel which acts as the reservoir of this energy. When needed, the redelivery of the energy is similar to that of the electric KERS implementation, the rotating flywheel is connected to the wheels of the car and when called upon provides a power boost.

The mechanical implementation of KERS is known to be more efficient than the electric equivalent due to the fewer conversions of the energy that are taking place. The implementations are similar to that what is used by hybrid passenger cars. The main difference is that in a hybrid car, the redelivered energy replaces the purpose of the engine and powers the car entirely.

In Formula 1 this would be infeasible. Instead the energy is used in addition to the current engine.