Imagine that there’s a transmission with significant overdrive in front of the generator.
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Yeah, this is just a reinvention of something like pumped hydroelectricity. And every issue with that listed is going to have a similar and corresponding issue with the energy vault. I’m not against trying it, but there are probably better electrical storage solutions coming on line that would provide a better solution.
It’s not naysaying, but there certainly are a lot of people with a lot of snazzy CGI demonstrations on youtube making it clear that they’re looking for series A funding… and not a lot of pracitcal real world tests… which you could easily do using scaled down components for a very low price.
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Another firm in the UK is already working on the below ground version.
This person didn’t debunk anything, he just pointed out there were better ways of doing it. There are always going to be places with excess sunlight and basically no water. Places where there is wind and water and very little sunlight, etc., etc. I’m sure it makes people feel smart to shit on lesser efficient options, but we need all the options we can get at this point.
I’m not familiar with this person’s youtube videos, but after watching this one I am less apt to click more.
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It seems like the places where there is excess capacity in the local reservoirs are going to be the exact places where there is no extra water to pump
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This silly contraption was debunked by Thunderfoot ages ago.
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Water does have its own losses: evaporation and infiltration.
I’m kinda not sure we do need all the options we can get at this point. We have a very large selection of options that we know works, and that we can build RIGHT NOW and that will get us on the path to Electrification. (As mentioned in Electrify, by Saul Griffith) . We have plenty of options that will work extremely well, we just need to start implementation, and stop trying to re-invent already invented tech in order to get venture capitalist funding.
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makes me think: since power lines are needed to get power from the generation site to it’s destination, it seems like power lines could also move the regenerative storage to a place away from the fields of wind turbines, or solar panels to somewhere that makes more sense.
maybe there are some areas with sun but no mountains, and some places with mountains and little sun - so just wire them together and trade.
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I used to work at a pump hydro called Blenheim Gilboa as a plant electrical engineer and technician supervisor - BG had 1000 feet of head which was actually a lot and created some dangers. The utility I worked for (New York Power Authority) had another plant in Buffalo called Lewiston that just stored excess nighttime power from Niagara Falls… that one had 230 feet of head. You can get 230 feet of head almost anywhere with any kind of hill. Ludington on the shore of Lake Michigan functions with 320 feet of head. The topology needed is nowhere near as mountainous as people believe, and in fact the best location is two wide flat areas with 3-400 feet difference between them… there’s lots of places like this.
The main downfall of PHS is that the efficiency is lower than batteries. The one I worked at was about 70% round trip all in. In theory others are higher, but I doubt they get above 80% in reality. The stationary lithium batteries I currently work on get a point of interconnection RTE of about 88% all in, and achieve higher a lot of the time. (On the other hand, while PHS needs constant maintenance it never degrades the way lithium does.)
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I rotted the brake pads on my 2017 Bolt because I decelerated using energy recovery almost all the time. It was fantastic for going down icy hills.
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Use an existing electrified railway from the mountains to the sea. We could load up the train with rocks in the mountains, and use regenerative breaking to generate electricity on the way to the sea. Dump the rocks into the ocean. Use the power from another descending train to get back up the mountain again. No huge weights and mineshafts. Electricity can move large distances with small loss, so we might as well use this. If we can use the rocks for something, better still.
The Rockies are still growing, so this is renewable.
My problem with this scheme isn’t that it’s ‘impossible’, it’s the opposite; it all looks pretty trivial.
I’ve learnt over the years that when I come up with an idea that seems really easy, but no one has used it before, that there’s usually a flaw which I’ve not noticed yet that will make it impractical. I’ve also learnt to be wary of people espousing such ‘simple’ ideas.
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I think the main thing that is overlooked is this isn’t so much about generation as it is storage. How do I take the energy I get from a solar panel or wind turbine and store it without batteries that require polluting industrial processes to create and regular replacement?
Less efficient? Obviously, but once built the loss of efficiency doesn’t seem nearly as big of a deal compared to polluting processes. I really see this as an on-site solution for a small area, or even like a single facility. Sort of like the micro-nuclear reactors they are talking about, without all the potential difficulties (horrors) that go along with that kind of thing.
I could see the ‘get a horse!’ attitude more if they were suggesting it is a perpetual motion machine or claiming it is more efficient than other methods, but I don’t think they are. Doesn’t matter to me if it is lifting rocks or water or winding a huge clock spring, if it reduced the need for an overall grid, polluting production of batteries, etc., I say give things a try.
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It’ll work as long as it’s a spherical cow in a vacuum.
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You can use water towers or air/gas pump tanks instead. But I think the big issue even with pumped energy storage is still an issue of real estate because you’ll need many of these water towers or air tanks to contain the air/water that will be pumped in and then released on demand. Both are mechanically practical but NIMBY is just wagging its finger at the very thought of an industrial park sized pump storage facility in the burbs, lol.
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As a mechanical engineer I disagree that using compressed air as a medium for energy storage is practical. Not only are large pressure vessels inherently risky and in need of regular inspection/certification, but they’re also grossly inefficient due to energy loss from adiabatic heating of the gas that occurs during compression. Most air compressors have cooling fins on the piston cylinders and the heat just goes into the air. Some more advanced systems can recover some of that energy through heat exchangers to do something useful with it, but you’re never getting back anywhere near the energy that you put into the system. The overall energy efficiency of compressed air for storing and releasing energy is below 60%.*
As for building water towers for pumped hydro, I haven’t done the math myself but I’ve read an analysis that says one average sized water tower has the energy storage equivalent to about four or five Tesla batteries, which seems about right to me:
Unless this analysis is way off, it’s hard to imagine water towers being cost competitive with batteries or other storage options.
*Edit:
Apparently if you’ve got giant salt caverns at your disposal and can retain the heat of the compressed air you can get an efficiency approaching 70%, which is still way below most other forms of energy storage.
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The Brainspore Principle?
How does it compare cost wise? Lithium ion batteries have a cost in the raw metals needed, the manufactured batteries, and the energy, human, and environmental costs of production. Does the lack of efficiency get made up for in other areas?
I don’t think there is a single solution here. In Kansas, where it gets mighty windy on the prairie, I see quite a few wind farms, and it makes sense to store excess energy to a bank of batteries. The typical topography of most of the state means that using pumped hyrdo power isn’t feasible.
Sure, that’s fair. It’s just the tone rubbing me the wrong way. Yes, those are all issues and maybe those are the very reasons something like this hasn’t worked in the past, and maybe those are the reasons it won’t work in the future either. But the people working on it aren’t dumb, probably know all about these problems, and either think they have a solution or think they aren’t actually problems and will prove it, or they won’t. Why treat them badly? “THIS IS A DUMB IDEA DON’T FALL FOR IT” just winds me up.
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