4 ms·
Except recouping the CO2-expenditure of the concrete piston will take a long time. A simpler solution is to use the gravitational potential energy of the water
by japanuspus 7y ago
Except recouping the CO2-expenditure of the concrete piston will take a long time. A simpler solution is to use the gravitational potential energy of the water directly. Pumped hydro, as this is known, is super simple if you have a mountain and maybe even an existing hydro-power plant to take the energy back out.
I have never checked this, but a Swiss friend of mine once explained the Swiss energy system as being centered around pumped hydro using free surplus power from the French nuclear power plants.
- omegabravo 7y agothat does look like a lot of concrete. I suppose ideally it would be a shell filled with the dirt removed to create the hole, even then it would be substantial at 150m in diameter (the smaller one)
- marsokod 7y agoYou create the rings of concrete around the cylinder while you are carving it, so actually not so much concrete. I am puzzled about the engineering required for the base, but on the paper it looks quite neat.
- InternetOfStuff 7y ago> Except recouping the CO2-expenditure of the concrete piston will take a long time. When the idea was described to me it was proposed to carve the piston out of sheer rock (obviously requiring fitting geology).
- lawlessone 7y agomy the mountains are high today.
- achow 7y agoWater batteries: Pumped hydro storage 'the unsung hero' of the US grid. https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/vj9amomb-hlexbyzolkgpg2 https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights...
- imtringued 7y agoThe entire point of hydraulic hydro is that energy capacity scales by r^4 (dimensions of the piston + height within the hole). It is possible to just carve out the piston head from existing rock with wire saws. Systems with 1.6TWh storage capacity are not impossible.
- Gracana 7y agoHow do you keep water from leaking past the piston?
- eliaspro 7y agoThere's a local company which has developed exactly this concept: https://heindl-energy.com/technical-concept https://heindl-energy.com/technical-concept Efficiency of around 80% (comparable to pumped hydro), capacity of 8GWh for a 250m diameter piston.