Joel,
In the May 2000 issue of Wired Magazine, I'm reading an interesting article. It's actually about an old technology that with some recent revolutions is set to replace lead acid batteries in a few years. The flywheel is being studied and there are some interesting innovations. One company is positioning itself to use the flywheel as a power backup to cellular sites and other distributed network type technology and they are also looking at the solar panel for homes and businesses to power the flywheel and store power. Anyway an interesting article that could produce viable home reliance technology fairly soon. If you get a chance to read the article I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know your thoughts.
Tom