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by willbudd 1153 days ago
Along the same line of thought, but flywheel energy storage would become quite appealing when the rotating mass can maintain stable levitation without any energy input (in the form of electromagnets or refrigeration as needed today).
2 comments

Flywheels main problem is already just energy density, they're more similar to a capacitor than a battery. There are situations where they would certainly be better, but as it is for the situations where they are useful I don't think the very low rate of power loss the best ones currently have is that big a deal.
better electric motors in general, they can be smaller when they have less waste heat to worry about, and higher torques. The navy was playing around with miniaturization of vessel motors more than a decade ago[0] but I haven't run into how that projects gone in the intervening years.

[0]https://www.powermag.com/superconductor-motor-for-navy-passe...