5 ms·
Well I would assume they weigh a ton and moving them and/or replacing them will be less troublesome if you can just bring a crane or something similar
by Zekio 7y ago
Well I would assume they weigh a ton and moving them and/or replacing them will be less troublesome if you can just bring a crane or something similar
- bertil 7y agoAmusingly, heavy things carried up and down by cranes are a promising way to store electricity.
- Dylan16807 7y agoI can't really agree with 'promising'. A tower that can lift 100 tons 50 meters is not exactly cheap, and only stores 13.6 kilowatt hours.
- redler 7y agoHere’s a company pursuing that very idea. https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/ https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris...
- mbreese 7y agoExactly. It’s really the same principle as pumping water uphill except using concrete blocks and a crane. Potential energy is potential energy. I’d just love to see it in action.
- Dylan16807 7y agoAh, if you actually build the structure out of the items you're lifting, then that certainly changes the math. Compared to just lifting with a crane you get a thousand times the capacity at the same infrastructure price.
- amirhirsch 7y agoconsider off shore gravity batteries that can drop mass down 2 to 4km. Major fixed cost is Hvdc out 100miles, but it’s extremely scalable after that.
- Geee 7y agoI wonder how much more energy this setup would store if they added cranes. Also it could be possible to make a circular vacuum maglev train out of these and add energy to it by accelerating.
- mbay 7y agoThere was an episode of Nova about energy storage that included a company that made kinetic energy storage devices. IIRC they had 5000 pound flywheels that spin in a vacuum and can be installed in your home. Expensive to purchase and install but essentially unlimited lifespan and totally renewable.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoI've heard about either a working system, or a calculation of something like that but with regular trains. Long story short, it can't actually store that much energy. More efficient (and less mechanically complicated) would be pumping water up a hill into a lake.
- astrodust 7y agoLead-acid batteries are pretty damned heavy and would make a great kinetic battery as well as a chemical one.