Gravity Energy Storage : A very uplifting technology!
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- Gravity energy storage is not actually a new concept. We've been doing it with pumped hydro for more than a century. But that's very expensive to build and needs an awful lot of space. Now though, two new companies have developed systems that mimic the effect of pumped hydro by raising and lowering extremely large and heavy weights up and down over huge height distances. So, do we have yet another addition to the growing grid scale energy storage family?
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Research links
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• Gravity Battery
Reconstrained Design Group
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Energy Vault
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Gravitricity
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#gravitybatteries #climateemergnecy #actnow
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I have long experience with these technologies: My father has some 100 year old clocks. Every morning, we pull on chains to raise the weights up, and the clocks run on gravity energy for the next 24 hours.
Same principle.
There's no such thing as "gravity energy". Every system that generates electricity via a mass falling from some height to a lower height, utilizes the energy of the massive object (may be water or any solid material) which was put into the mass (potential energy) while it was being raised to the highest point in the system. Think of gravity like a spring. The higher you raise an object away from the earth, the more the spring (gravity) gets stretched, pulling harder on the massive object. When the massive object is allowed to fall, that potential energy is slowly being converted into kinetic energy through gears and finally to a generator. Please don't think that this is some sort of "free energy" device. It most assuredly is not.
@@Xray-Rep "The higher you raise an object away from the earth, the more the spring (gravity) gets stretched, pulling harder on the massive object." It's been 40 years since my high school physics, but this is clearly wrong.
Same principle.
Now Imagine that weight being 10s of tons of mass and wire being 100m long in 20-35 m/s wind. Not that great thing when considering pendulum effect that system has.
What works in small scale, doesn't always work in large scale. These are very good reminder of that. There are many variables that small scale can hide.
@@Xray-Rep You are missing the point. Eccessive energy by wind and solar which is free can be stored for later use in these gravity blocks is the subject of discussion.
These energy companies be dropping a lot of new developments recently. They understand the gravity of the situation.
I made a crude gravity generator design around 2010(Then my computer got fried).... I presented a UV HVAC Upgrade system design to my employer around 2005(got shot down, as too expensive (BS).... I have other design's just in my head now about anti-gravity, and personal flying device(never seen a design close to anything like it yet) .... they'll have to dig me up and try to make sense of it through nuralink.... and thats all I have to say about that!!!... Cheers.
Theres a real problem with Just have a think as he thinks this stupid idea is good! Hes that stupid! and should not be listened too on any subject even basic logic!
I'm not sure how sustainable it is, but if you drop that hammer on your toe, you'll release a lot of energy as you hop around on the other foot. Biggest problem will be all the noise generated by this system, which may not be appropriate if children are near by.
Simple fix: install a wind turbine in front of the noise source. The turbine turns the profanity energy into electrical energy, just as we do with the wind - you'd be surprised at the kinds of exit velocities that stuff can reach. With an efficient enough turbine, you can utilize a large enough portion of the profanity energy to make the noise all but inaudible, as well as putting some of that excess power to good use.
Noisy, quite likely. In that case utilising defuct mine shafts seems a good solution at least as a starter.
Nah, it'd take way too long time to recharge - you'd need at least a week before your stubbed toe is fit for another go, I don't think your Netflix binge urge can wait that long!
@@andershusmo5235 mo moo. Mo moo m
The gravity system was used in lighthouses to turn the lenses for over a hundred years thus giving the flash, a weight was winched up on a cable and when allowed to descend slowly through a gearbox turned the lenses which floated on a tray of mercury.
As a British person, there's nothing I love about this channel more than the extremely British way he speaks in this video.
Well there is the way he's trying to educate to save our human society...
+1
As a French person, I love it too: finally someone who knows how to articulate to facilitate the understanding of non-native speakers ^^
Say English person from now on pal, British isn't a thing now.
As an American Colonist it is quite a treat to hear English spoken correctly..Also the content is quite interesting.
I had a gravity energy storage device for many years but had to get rid of it when I moved to a smaller house. It was also useful for telling the time.
Don’t hold copyright payments against Johnny Cash.
He did tell us, “Ain’t no grave can hold my body down.”
The mine shaft is probably the best option. Not affected by adverse weather conditions, quiet and virtually invisible.
Don't rule out abandoned open pit mines and the Grand Canyon. Existing Hydro dams also provide elevation. Lake Meade is drying up and will expose lots of room for a wind farm. Multiple installations and locations using the same concept but using varying techniques will be required.
I like the mineshaft concept. Out of sight, out of mind.
And there's no shortage of old mineshafts in the coal country of Appalachia, which could also use the jobs.
@@charlesinglin Same in Montana, Texas, Michigan and New York- all at one time big coal producers.
If they're digging new shafts, they can be put anywhere, including the densest of cities.
@@PatrickKQ4HBD Keep thinking like that. There is a solution to our energy problem- some one of us or several of us will find it!
I feel like it's got less risk too. If a cable snaps in the mineshaft the ground might shake, but unlikely to lead to other property damage.
With the stack of concrete it seems like there is higher risk of collateral damage if it collapses.
Probably less moving parts in the mineshaft one too, which should make it easier to maintain.
**Looks at all the empty mineshafts in the Appalachian mountains**
Well, time to get cracking.
Same here for the north of England!
@Bainsworth It's both. E=mgh. Double the height, double the energy. Double the mass, double the energy.
I heard they have also been looking at using some of the abandoned mine railways with weighted carts (v. steep winch railways for moutain-side mines). Probably not as big in terms of scale but might serve a local community well and don't require as much building.
Subterranean spaces can also be used for compressed-air energy storage (CAES) if there's a sizeable cavern down the shaft so a cost-performance comparison would be needed for those (if they exist with caverns).
@@DavidBeaumont railways in reverse!
Instead of weighed carts, you could have a load that you can take on and off, increasing the storage capacity. Or you could use thanks that get filled with water. This could be then be further optimised by using a pump instead of the train.
I love your channel, keep up the good work and thank you to all the patrons.
I'm really enthralled with these developments, and will comment in Patreon. Thanks, Dave!
I emailed gravitricity and asked about, combining it with heat-exange. Got an answer the next day. They already thinking about it.
Sure, because you gave them the idea.
I heard about fully loaded trains moving up (by electricity) and down (by gravity) a mountain. They seem a lot more easy to set up.
I think it is better than the crane based system shown here.
i love his optimism. with you all the way brother
yes! Been looking forward for this to be covered!
I once saw a proposal to do this sort of thing by dragging heavily loaded rail cars up hills and recapturing the energy on the way down. Advantage would be that only rails need to be added to the landscape, not complete towers, and additional "weights" could be added just by employing more freight cars. Same idea, though.
Mine shafts are already there and less visible.
That project was my first exposure to this notion of using weights to spin a generator/winch to make grid-scale electricity, even though I grew up with weight-powered cuckoo clocks and grandfather clocks.
@@peterbrickwood3204 The trouble with mine shafts is that they are inevitably full of water. You can either pump the water out which takes a lot of energy or be satisfied with less apparent mass powering your generator (dry mass minus displaced water mass). Still, worth a go: not much to lose in trying.
could you do this with elevators/lifts in an existing skyscraper?
I know there's usually counterweights but you could use regenerative braking to offset the differences in either direction depending on the weight. You'd still need to power the lifting of a heavy car and the lowering of a light one.
Fascinating, what a brilliant idea.
What a great use of old mine shafts.
Thanks for an informative video.
Breakthrough! I've been watching this space for 53 years. This is far and away the most practical.
I once had the fun idea to build my whole house as a gravity energy storage for to be installed solar cells or wind turbine while knowing that it would be far too expensive and impractical but I'm amazed that it's a legit strategy on such large scales
Yeah but is only good as a pumped hydroelectric dam. The energy vault design is the worst thing I have ever seen.
@@magicsasafras3414 How so? It looks like a massive art installation.... and it generates cheap energy!?
@@coenraadloubser5768 it doesn't generate energy it stores it and terribly too
@@magicsasafras3414 Sure it doesn't have the best carbon footprint, doesn't store much... and it's not wind proof - but not anyone can build a hydroelectric dam... I'm sure it has a place somewhere...
@@coenraadloubser5768 listen gravity battery's are good but only when designed properly. The company gravtricity made a simple design that works flawlessly on a small scale. Energy vault tried making a small scale system big, but that doesn't work. Pumped hydroelectrics are meant to store a city's worth of energy. Pulley battery's are ment to power something like a construction site for a short time.
They should build a moat around that tower block to drop the blocks into.
The mine shaft one is certainly less of an eye-sore.
Don't know if you have covered mechanical batteries(fly wheel storage)on your great series,which is another system which could quite possibly be combined with all these other systems(like an ion battery being the gravity weight,with a fly wheel).i would like to share my scale up idea for a heat battery(my own idea,with micro wave safe glass tubes(there patented invention)heating an iron filament from the sun,through the (patented glass,that by it's molecular structure,does not allow,Evan one ÷of the heat too escape.this in turn would be reconverted into electrical energy at night,by the geothermal method,or vise versa,but on a smaller interconnected systems way,a bit like solar panels.tell me what you think ( :and if maybe this could be tested,and Evan financed.freedom
Excellent. Thank you.
I'm an Electrical Engineer and I loved your channel! Continues! Success! Gratitude! 👏🏽
it would be interesting to consider cases where harnessing the weight energy doesn't involve using electricity for power transfer. For example, the mechanical motion of descending weights could be hard-geared to a coolant compressor for a large AC system.
Sure, or build a wind turbine on top of the mine shaft and run a (clutched) belt from it to the mineshaft cranes.
Thing is, electricity as energy transport can be very fungible and cheap. The efficiency losses in converting to electricity and back are often a small price to pay for the ease of moving the energy around. That is not to say it's *never* practical to use other means of energy transport. District heating is a prime example, in which you have a central boiler supplying steam to heat many buildings.
@Kurt Euler or you just utilise the nearest free source of energy = wind or solar
Kites on a windy day....messy but they might just work. The involvement of Cemex in the project mentioned has me wondering if this isn't just greenwash for a horrendous polluter.....I suppose only history will tell us....
Presumably they are just involved for their expertise in forming the blocks; as long as the stated ingredients for these blocks are all waste products as claimed, there will be no need to create fresh concrete.
@@danyoutube7491 I agree with you within the parameters of the individual project, but think bigger, more strategically - can Cemex be persuaded to find radical alternatives to their business model or is this simply the equivalent of oil companies planting trees and building one off hydrogen refuelling stations, doing just enough to keep away regulation and guidance from elected governments?
Cement? All construction materials will also be made with clean energy, so it doesn't matter - unless more energy is used to make whatever storage than the energy it will ever store in its life. This last metric is the ultimate limiting factor. All else is just a matter of scaling.
We _still_ need fossil fuels to kickstart renewable energy and storage until awesome clean energy industrialization really gets going (like Tesla's factories in a couple of years).
@@fireofenergy Conventional cement does indeed use a lot of energy, but the basic chemistry of mixing coke with lime or other carbonates is intrinsically CO² emitting. This is Cemex's basic business model - I hope they can change to using other methods, but fear they may not.
R.e. Kites...That’s energy generation, not energy storage. Even still, kites = wind turbines but much more fussy.
Brilliant content as usual, this channel is the got source for sustainable energy info.
Thank you, Dave, for yet another wonderful video. I really enjoy how you explore new options & new directions. Your videos enrich my lockdown experience.
Cheers Anthony. I'm delighted to hear they are of some use. Thanks for your support. I really appreciate it. All the best.
Angry Thunderf00t noises from the energy vault tower
lol you beat me by 30 min XD
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought that.
Haven't seem him in a while, did he already debunked this quite frankly ridiculously looking idea ? Im not a distinguished expert on the field but the whole contraption seems to me like an engineering nightmare with all the moving parts that can fail.
@@CraftyF0X Yes, ruclips.net/video/NIhCuzxNvv0/видео.html
It's a bit tricky to debunk it, as formally speaking it does not violate laws of physics. Though someone who is able to make such system of rapid block construction work is clearly wasting his talent in energy storage sector, and instead should offer to build some affordable skyscrapers in a few hours. ;)
Totally had this idea in Collage back in 2002. But, if you don’t put your ideas into action then it’s your own fault. Good luck to them.
Using defunct mineshafts is the best idea. There are countless shafts in the UK and many other countries.
Also, boring down a number of 1 metre diameter 1 km deep shafts, with long thin weights sounds excellent. They can be dropping at different times. They do not visually defaced the surface. Little maintenace required. If a cable breaks, leave the weight at the bottom of the shaft, installing another.
The sooner the better
Thank you for the video
Rail cars heading up and down mountains is another similar approach being explored in California.
Old clocks used to use gravity weights.
Big Ben?
Yes, it's a very efficient form of energy storage.
@@raykent3211 no it isn’t, it’s just useful for clocks...
@@epiccollision à planet following an elliptical orbit is described as converting to and fro between gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy. This must be lossless or it would have lost energy and crashed into the sun before I was born. So, 100% efficient, pretty much by definition. So, per se, the conversion from gravitational potential to kinetic is lossless. Losses are incurred elsewhere, such as friction in gearing, which can be minimised. Yep, mate, the principle those old clocks are based on can be hyper-efficient.
@@raykent3211, interesting in theory, but fails in practice, the human has to convert food into energy in order to lift the weight once a day to power the clock for only a day, the self same clock can run for better than 12 months on the chemical energy in a single 1.5V carbon / zinc cell.
Even in the “Matrix” that’s wasteful.
Love this channel.
Amazingly interesting as always! Thanks!
It's basically a massive grandfather clock.
Maybe Energy Vault can paint the blocks in bright colours of the rainbow, to imitate a children's toy and make it a bit post-modern.
I like your public relations kind of thinking 👍🏻
That could certainly be a way to improve the public's receptivity to such a project and reduce NIMBYism. A rainbow, or some mural about the local area, so they can get excited when it's close to being put back together in the right order.
@@kaitlyn__L they would need two and have the blocks turn so the correct side is showing for each stack. Where something like a curved rainbow would just reverse in the other stack.
a Tower of Hanoi variation might work! 😂
You give me hope for the future of our planet by sharing these innovations!
Oh my. This channel is the best on RUclips. Simply excellent. Thank you.
Cheers Anders. I really appreciate your support :-)
It's been really interesting to hear about all these energy storage ideas like gravity energy, flow batteries, liquid air, flywheel, iron-air, lithium, zinc etc etc but I'd just like to see an overview that compared of these different technologies listing the pros and cons of each. Things like efficiency, storage available, cost, size, environmental impact etc. Has there been any real life comparison tests made to see how these storage technologies work in practise?
Simple overview is that all of the once you mentioned are far far too expensive to ever store energy on a grid scale.
@@NiklasLarssonSeglarfan I'd still want to know what their cost, efficiency, storage capacity and a list of pros and cons. Pumped hydro (using gravity to store energy) seems to be used on the grid scale. Switzerland, just this week, introduced a 20GWh system.
@@mikebikekite1 Yeah, there are plenty of pumped hydro around, but in general they do little more than grid stability and handling peaks, not used as baseload for days on end. And, pumped hydro has the same issues as hydro, it ruins local nature and can only be put in a handful of locations.
But reading about the one in Switzerland i must say i am impressed! But even with its 2.3 bn usd it can still only give energy for 20 hours.. Its decent, but we'll probably never be able to combine renewables and batteries.
There seems to be a hell lot of moving parts in the "Energy Vault" system. As a general rule, the more moving part you have, the more risk of failure you have. Frictions between blocks, degradation of the concrete blocks, mis-alignments due to wind and rain on the structure, resilience to earthquakes. Those are only some points that came to my mind is a couple of minutes. The only advantage it seems to have against pump hydro is the energy density of the system but I think the constant need of maintenance to keep this system running far out weight the gains.
Other strength pumped hydro is much more limited when it comes to *where* it can be located, but otherwise I totally agree with you. The Graviticity proposal seems much more reasonable, but because it's less flashy it seems to get less attention (especially here in the comments), shame really.
true
Agreed. The liquid redox battery is going to prove to best the best option down the road. Being able to stack shipping containers of liquid batteries and leave them for 25+ years without moving around will be the safest and least amount of maintenance. I would rather see those concrete blocks be made of carbon capture concrete and used as levees of building blocks.
But this is entirely missing the point. If the world is to move to clean, renewable energy sources (as it surely must), then - as is so often pointed out - various means to store energy from times of surplus to times of high demand are essential. The fact that a given storage system may be "less efficient" in terms of its maintenance needs is irrelevant. No one denies that there are problems that will need to be overcome; but the big picture has to be looked at. Why be negative? Why not try to see the positive and the potential?
@@chrislaf2011 it all comes down to 2 major factors 1: cost per megawatt storage 2: renewable materials that are abundant and nontoxic. Gravity storage has the material part figured out but the cost per megawatt is probably 2-3x pump hydro and loss of efficiency and maintenance. This project might be fine for R&D but I believe redox batteries will be a far better investment. It will eventually have a low cost per megawatt and be made from non-toxic materials that can be recycled after their 25+ year lifespan. They can also be stackable to fit into major metro areas where space is a major cost premium.
Great content as always. Keep the videos coming. Thanks.
There is a train used to provide gravity energy storage in California. ARES (Advanced Rail Energy Storage) already has a test track in the Tehachapi, California, region and also in Pahrump, Nevada it is building a 50MW facility.
Thanks for another great video! Of the two of them, Gravitricity seems more realistic to me, since it's a lot simpler. Energy Vault sounds amazing, but it has so many moving parts with all the cables and hundreds of blocks, there's lots of ways it can go wrong. Seems to me these gravity batteries need to be big, dumb and reliable. You've got to shift lots of mass over and over again without anything breaking down, which makes "dumb" simple designs preferable.
Energy vault is a scam(at least I think) because I refuse to believe that someone is stupid enough to come up with such an awful design. Gravitricity is an actual company that actually works because the design is literally one of the simplest batteries out there and its realistic. Weight based kinetic batteries are only good at small scales. For a city you need pumped hydroelectric dams because they only work at large scales. A weight battery at it's largest would probably be the size of an elevator (though you could go bigger, the potential storage to size ratio would drop significantly). Dams need to be large because water only has high storage potential in large volume. A dam the size of an elevator would have terrible potential storage(I would say the smallest dam is a small lake but that's only going to power like a few houses for an extended amount of time). They are both good but they are meant to store power on different scales.
The liquid metal batteries promise a high efficiency , high cycle life grid storage option that is un restricted in deployment.
How do they compare in fully amortized cost to the gravity storage described here? Gravity is claimed to be 4 cents per kWh, according to the video.
@@incognitotorpedo42 We should combine this systems for grid frequency estabilization & baseload grid filling.
. The gravity storage contains huge ammounts of energy, it can "blackstart".
. The liquid metal batteries requires heat to keep themselves "liquid" (so in case of a failure it shutdowns & needs a lot of input of energy); but while they are operational, it is more efficient.
-> Combined with liquid air storage (the heat reservoir in/next the liquid metal batteries), there is a thermodynamic sinergy [plus allowing different ways to charge/discharge].
@@incognitotorpedo42 my understanding is that it is cheaper than pumped hydro.
@@adolfodef as part of a grid , it would be expected to have multiple charge and discharge cycles daily. The longer that a liquid metal battery is expected to hold a charge the less efficient that it gets. This technology is for frequency regulation and short term power storage for 1 or 2 days. But that is exactly what is needed for solar and wind farms or grid scale frequency regulation.
Hi Drew. We'll be looking at those in the next video.
Interesting, thanks!
I'm a big fan of Gravitricity and wanted to see it on this show for quite a while. I'm very happy the time has come now and it is a great video!
I don't like EnergyVault as much due to aesthetics and doubts on its practicality, but I'm eager to see how both projects (and others if there are more of course) develop and what he future holds! I hope we really see these in action sooner than later.
The energy capacity is WAY too low for how complicated they are. Pumped hydro is the clear winner since you can store millions of tons of water very easily.
It's not one-size fits all. If these technologies can be optimized to be cost-competitive, they'll play a role in a comprehensive grid-level storage solution. A win no matter how you look at it.
Pumped hydro has a far lower energy density and would actually take as more material to make than an equivalent capacity system. It also has large ecological effects and can impact across national lines (eg the damming of the Nile).
These systems also provide a potential use for otherwise waste construction material.
Pumped hydro can't be built everywhere. People will need different solutions for each situation. In the plains/prairies, there is no suitable landscape for pumped hydro.
PH is only good where there is plenty of water & suitable geography.
That excludes large parts of the planet
I watched the Thunderfoot vid on this a while back, will be interesting to see the results now that they have a real world test version in play. I think he raised some interesting questions about the effect of wind on the system, in that it would lead to sway in the cables and impact the precision of the system's ability to stack the blocks. He also speculated that the blocks will slowly chip each other away at the edges which seems like a possibility. Not sure what the tolerances are in terms of the stacking? Their website is pretty heavy on the marketing and light on information.
well Thunderf00t made the video and the calculations and it wasn't useful at all.
So many great designs & systems to produce alternative energy!
This has blown my mind
My god! This is genius.
I have seen alot of fantastic idea, but "dam" terrific!
Will the heavy blocks moving up and down be stable enough in a windy place. Plus too many moving parts
And I wonder if it can survive a single earthquake.
Danmit I just commented the same ..I should learn to read the comments first 😂
I suppose it could be a part of a multi-prong system where wind turbines are employed in windy conditions and surplus wind energy used to stack until such time as it becomes dangerous to move cranes.
@@MrBizteck To be fair youtube does not make reading it's comments easy.
@@rupert7565 Especially, when the comment is in the replies. A search feature would be nice.
I wonder who is tidying up in his shed after that tool box attack :-)
Thanks for sharing.
Great video! Keep 'em coming :)
That's really encouraging and indeed something I wanted to explore mathematically for economic feasibility. Do you know how well each energy storage technology will compared among the many that we have explored so far?
Go constant clean energy 🌟
drive.google.com/file/d/1bvjs-U307TGyz1z6AUsZ9oZiG4u_x4Ev/view?usp=drivesdk
Encouraging to who...what do i care, treason hang me, what do I care, clean energy technology 💪. Be the Greatest 👍
drive.google.com/file/d/1--MtSpDpex-zxEcPFOw0EQxVcWcaAk1O/view?usp=drivesdk
@@channelwarhorse3367 encouraging for humanity.
Presumably, you have to go with their claimed levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and you don't get to see how their number crunchers (number manipulators ?) derived it. I don't know though, just an assumption, and I'll not be researching that.
Grind up clean energy technology before we all oven out, Baker Love 💘. Baking bread is easier then peace ✌
ruclips.net/video/vrf6yfE_17E/видео.html
With all due respect to you & Energy Vault, this scheme has been torn to shreds on Thunderfoot's channel! Rail systems on longish slopes are far more practical.
you need to find more comprehensive sources
@@Leopold5100 just watch the video its pretty clear from an engineering point of view
Ah..Thunderf00t...bless him, and his nihilistic depression-fest channel :-)
@@JustHaveaThink haha good point, i also dislike his attitude but its still fun to watch and he is right about most things he debunks :) i like your channel ! energy storage is a huge topic with lots of different possibilities. Im very interested in flywheels
@@JustHaveaThink But still his criticism is valid, if you take some time to watch the video, i too very often find many errors on his videos (sometimes making mistakes in his calculations - or using too much hyperbole, or self rightfulness). But his "busted" series is most of the times on the spot exposing charlatans and scammers alike, to people that lack basic science and engineering education - esp. those that drink too much of Green Tech Kool-Aid, and believe that for every problem there is a simple (or should i say simplistic) technological solution. There is a rule for exposing such scammers (that take advantage of people's real worry about climate change, and taking their money and run), if you only see from the beginning animations and no working prototypes, promising extraordinary things on performance, durability, longevity never mentioning anything negative or technical hurdles then... sniff sniff i smell a scam.
Thanks
I have a book on sustainability written in the sixties advancing the thought that why use a weight for gravity storage when useful weights are commonly available.
Houses, for example.
You could live in the “weight” which is elevated during offpeak/renewables and dropped when the energy is needed.
OK, you need pillars and umbilicals to bring the water, telephone etc, but heh! live in your battery AND have a better view half the time!
Like a houseboat
I prefer my term "Kinetic Energy Storage" lol. Should have been doing this kind of stuff decades ago.
That's potential energy, though. E.g. the Flywheel energy storage is a kinetic energy storage system.
It's existed for centuries, just never applied large scale.
Okay, now you should watch thunder foot debunking this technology. 😂
Please post a link.
@@peterbrickwood3204 ruclips.net/video/NIhCuzxNvv0/видео.html
Excellent video, surprised you didn't mention clocks. About an hour before I watched this video I went into my living room and pulled up the weights on my grandfather clock.
Good point Terry. Exactly the same principle :-)
Good idea. Such a contraption can be built anywhere.
PS power stations are using thousands of tons of water with hundreds to thousands of meters of drop height. And they are far from enough to store energy from renewable sources. In France, we have water and mountain, so we use relatively speaking a hih amount of hydropower, and we mainly use them to regulate the power grid (but only 18% of our hydropower is PSPS so maybe we have some margine to improve on storage).
now, if we replace PSPS by a mass of heavy steel, with a density of 8, we'd need 1/8 of the surface of a lake at a few hundreds of meters to generate a comparable energy.
1MW of power output for 8 hours, so you'd need 4 of them to simulate 1 medium size wind turbine, and 8 more if you want electricity for a full calm day. That's a joke.
We are seriously looking at batteries. because it's more feasible. Potential and kinetic energies are weak. Chemical energies is 100-100 times more concentrate. And then nuclear energy is again 100-100 times more concentrate.
Potential energy= mass*height*g, physic is a bitch.
I guess you also have to factor in the costs and lifespans of chemical batteries, vs these batteries made from recycled materials with potentially longer lifespans.
I think it's unrealistic to think of the energy vault as a mass storage device like pumped hydro, for the reasons you say. I think this would be more of a competitor to the sort of load-balancing that those new Tesla grid batteries do, with quick response but relatively short charge/discharge times.
How quickly and cheaply can you dig a hole compared to building a nuclear station?
We could fit about a thousand of them in one open-cut mine.
@@PinataOblongata Good thing you can fit a thousands of them if you want that instead of a nuclear power plant (even if they don't serve the same purpose), because at maximum power of a few MW you'd need 1000-6000 of them to replace a single thermal power plant, only to have same power output, but not the same energy output. And you don't produce any watt if you don't have an equal energy input beforehand so you still need a source of energy. Now, is it still cheaper and faster to build 1000 overbuilt clock weight like this, and his power source like 250 windmill, or 1 single thermal power plant, being nuke if you like it?
Thunderfoot poked a lot of holes into this concept.
That's his claim to fame though.. A real downer man.. Except a lot of his holes are not well, quite, well PROVED !
@@seanhoare7639 He made some good points on the cost benefits. You use more power than you get back.
Gravity power is nothing new. London had a whole hydraulic power grid back in the last century pre-electricity powered by the same basic concept. A very heavy weight compressing water which was then piped to several blocks of industrial buildings. I believe it was elevated by steam power.
@@thtiger1 The point is that the power you use is NOT required at the time it was generated so the choice is lose it or use it!
@@seanhoare7639 But you need to get a return on your investment. A money pit does not do the trick. I can't do Thunderfoots arguments justice here, but he makes some very good points about how viable this is.
@@thtiger1 If a return on investment was the ONLY criteria (& it seems money does talk) then I would agree But there are other societal / ecological benefits to be had or we could just waste the excess power.. As a species we seem to be very good at waste!
I love the diversity of inovation. If you could raise and lower your house by 1 meter that would help most households cover their peek energy needs. Obviously a ramp would be required to exit the house.
And when the house is up, you could peek under it.
Your quick-release design was ingenious 😂😂
can this be integrated into elevators and cranes like alternators for the building/vehicle?
Good point, I live in an apartment block with lifts, the energy could be used for the communal area lighting at night.
it already is. at least here in austria. they reduce power consumption but are just viable in some big apartment buildings. www.otis.com/documents/256045/6552829/Regen_Drive_UK.pdf/f470aba1-af7d-b4b3-ecc1-547c2984fbf1?t=1591127484167
Modern elevators, cranes trains do operate using this principles: if it is possible a lift will generate electricity and put it back in the grid. Same goes for trains and cranes (at least for the modern ones).
Yup they already do this. But gravity on earth is very weak so there is not that much energy that is possible to be stored in such a system. Now if we built elevators on the sun, we could store a lot more energy!
Another idea is a buoyancy generator. Basically make a giant steel vessel that you can pump air into and out of .... fill it with water, it becomes as buoyant as the weight of the steel container (so make it heavy) and can sink down as far as the ocean goes generating energy. Then when it gets to where you want, pump in air and repeat.
Ivory - The drawbacks, here, are a loss of mass due to the weight of the water (i.e. you need a lot more mass of steel to get the same 'weight'), the hoses for the air, and the marine environment.
Great idea. But, seawater will corrode it quite quickly.
@@johnburns4017 I don't know about quickly. There are a lot of long term marine structures. Could also make it out of things like ferro cement (cheaper).
@@mikegraham7078 Yup, it would have to be large enough to be worth it. And then the cable / chain would also be an extreme weight consideration.
Complete bullshit. You get the same energy by just keeping the vessel on the ocean floor an letting water flow in. Compared to said concept you idea has only disadvantages and lots of them for no obvious benefit.
The later concept is being investigated but is not terribly economical either.
Another great video my friend thank you very much I’m going to share it with all my engineer buddies
Cheers. I really appreciate your support. All the best.
Yeah seems great!
What about useing the tyde to lift heavey weight twice a day.
You can use the tide to capture tidal flows at high tide and then gradually release them to generate power, so long as you have enough water and a decent difference in water levels.
There's a system called tidal lagoons. They do basically this
@@romuloramosdias1137 Good idea. Where are they currently in operation?
@@yggdrasil9039 there are many of those in Europe, but I don't remember exactly where. There's a video explaining this
Maybe we could all have a shaft in the garden. No pun intended.
Good to see that type of system being developed. It also of course has zero energy loss for longer term storage. I think you will find it has been used to drive clocks for a great deal longer than a century.
And the clocks got somewhat smaller when the transition to batteries was made 😂. Take that as a clue to the feasibility of these project.
Amazing theme again
Exercise: Find out the energy storage capacity of a Tesla power wall. Design a gravity storage system with the same capacity that would fit inside a house.
You'd put it outside the house. Maybe at the end of the house where the chimney used to go?
To have the same energy storage capacity of a tesla power wall 13.5 kwh you would need to drop a chuck of concrete that weighs 1 tonne almost 10 meters. Not practical in my opinion.
@@nerdy1701 Thanks! If we assume concrete has density 2 (actually it's 2.3 approx) then a tonne block would occupy a volume of 50 x 100 x 100 cm. 10 m is 4 storeys each 2.5 m high; a typical detached house would more likely be 2 storeys, or 5 m high. You could store the same energy by doubling the weight and halving the height. So you could have 4 half-tonne weights 50 x 50 x 100 cm (or cylinders, like clock weights) going up and down the whole height of the 5-metre house. If you spent a little more money on the weights you could buy lead ones (density 11), and either shrink the actual weight or weights, or shorten the height about 5 times, so you would only need about a metre instead of 5. In conclusion it doesn't seem impossible, just cumbersome - the best solution might be to build a dedicated tower, either up against the building to give it a medieval look, or free standing like an Italian bell tower.
@@nerdy1701 I have 4 tonne in cars sitting in my garage every night...2.5 meters might be feasible...
@@gerardvila4685 Great idea.
Thank You Once Again ! Happy New Year 2021 !! BTW ... the proposed “Space Elevators” could also serve as gravity-based generators !!!
This is a brilliant idea! Almost embarrassingly simple.
The Victorians knew this... did you ever see the inside of a grandfather clock ? Two lead weights on cords runs the clock for a week before you wind them up again...
Well before the Victorians, the bloke who made my grandfather clock (S. Lawson) died in 1770
@@rogerbarton497 thanks , I'm no historian !
6:30 "They claim a 50-year design life -with no cycle limit or degradation" Sounds like marketing wank to me. I've worked with 450 tonne (1,000,000 lb) cable hoisting systems and sooner or later the cable will have done enough work that some or all of it will need to be replaced.
I don't think they mean "without maintenance".
I think what they mean is that after 50 years, it will still produce the same quantity of power as when it started. For example like how batteries degrade over time, even with proper maintenance.
It was an odd statement either way, like the 90% efficiency claim also....
Obviously the system will require routine maintenance. The statement was "no cycle limit or degradation" - which is accurate to the system as a whole, but not every single piece of equipment in it.
@@anonuser12345 That would be the same for battery storage though. You can exchange the cells, the system as whole remains.
My assessment is the mine shaft would be the better system than the tower system since high winds and other severe weather would not affect it. Thus, the mine system would be more responsive during such times of severe weather. Plus, I would be concerned about the heavy blocks falling during a storm so that the tower operation would have to be secured for storms and thus not available when most needed.
Low wind profile high weight not really a big issue. Earthquakes are more real risk.
There are huge wind farms in west Texas which are surrounded by table-top mesas. A slanted rail system from the top of the mesa to the plains below could be a kinetic energy storage solution. The rock removed from the mesa to make the rail bed could be part of the moving mass.
I really love your work but energy vault is not a grid scale solution and actually a dumb idea. You need to move much larger masses to make gravitational storage viable 500T doesn't make a dent on grid scale. Liquid air is much more viable and less of an eyesore especially if you put them underground.
@@wishmasterbrazen Link here: m.ruclips.net/video/NIhCuzxNvv0/видео.html
I really need someone to check my math(s) here
Potential energy = m g h
So 25 tons over a 150m mine shaft
P. E. = 25000 x 9.81 x 150
P.E. = 36787500 J (sounds good)
Or 10.2kWh Or ~1 €/£/$ of electricity. Not so good. A little more than 1 Tesla powerwall. Not a great return for a hefty crane hanging over a very deep hole. Would appreciate any corrections
Looks right. This is why gravity storage needs such large scale.
@@PaulMansfield At least I'm not going mad. Pumped hydro works because you have huge amounts of water. You would need enormous amounts of concrete and pulleys and motors that need to work under enormous loads for large amounts of time. Doesn't add up for me.
Sounds like you're referring to the gravitricity site. That one is only a small scale demonstration. They will be far larger at full scale and have multiple weights in multiple drop shafts.
@@JustHaveaThink Thanks for your response. Day made 😊.
Fascinating!
there is also a thing called ski lift. Which is quite common in the alpine region. This thick wire cable weight lifting infrastructure is when idle a candidate for gravity energy.
Please make a video about earthships.
Here is a critique of the Energy Vault by Thunderfoot - he's a little over the top at times but raises some pretty good points. Pumped hydro is definitely costly but it is also gigawatt scale. I think Highview Power liquid air storage system (mentioned briefly and in an earlier video) is far more practical. ruclips.net/video/NIhCuzxNvv0/видео.html
Amazing
Brilliant
If we'd just scale up nuclear, we could have reliable electricity without all the extra mining for all these half baked battery storage schemes and we wouldn't have to blight all those landscapes with rust prone wind towers and future landfill feedstock.
Let's not think too logically! Lol
?_? Aside from the fact that you are totally not on the ball, rust prone? Lol they are literally made from fiberglass! Last I checked fiberglass was not famous for rusting.
This idea has too little energy density, so it is almost impractical to lift any solid materials. You will get extremely high forces and complex machinery to get it working. And you need millions and millions of tons of solid materials. Just do the math. If you lift 1 ton of material at 1 m, you will get E = mgh ~ 1000 *10 * 1 = 10 kJ of energy. To get any sensible amount of storage for example, 10 kW of power for 1 day you need 864 Mj of energy, or you need to lift /drop 8.64 Kt at 10 m height. To get 10 KW you already need pretty massive machinery to work with 8 640 000 kg object. All project of this type looks like a scam.
In the first example each block weighs 35 tons and the building is 150m. That means each block lowered gives you 52.5 MJ. Considering it looks like it can do 6 blocks simultaneously, you could get 315MJ from a single simultaneous drop. That's not far off what you say is required and that is just for 1 drop.
@@ragerancher At 3:57 how much energy in lowering the remaining blocks?
These people also use cables that never wear out (according to their calculations).
Pumping fluids is better if possible at the location.
@@DreadX10 Not saying whether the other considerations make it good or not, just that you may as well use the numbers given in the video rather than some generic ones.
But you need 35 tons and 150 m height just to barely support 10 kW or small house. Typical consumption can be up to 50 kW. Have you seen 35 tons crane with 150 m arm? Looks way to complex for such small energy.
What looks obvious to me is this energy is computed and reported using the max height of 150m but that's only for the first few blocks. Then the height gets less and less as the blocks from and ever shrinking pile are lowered to an ever growing pile. Maybe it works but I remain skeptical.
Build a gym next to the empty mineshaft with pulleys and cables all leading down the shaft. We would need an octovalve but for pulleys system though.
Thanks, good video. I think those liquid metal batteries look impressive.
Thanks William. We'll be looking at Liquid Metal Batteries in the next video.
Giant overhead crane is more scalable than a tower. Imagine 1 km track.
HELP 💥 I am not an engineer, but I have always wondered how the maths of this question goes...,
How does the gearing work in a situation where I could have a 10 tonne weight , 100yds height , be falling slow enough to run a 1kw motor for "X" amount of time.
Love some suggestions ❤️👍
@@jimbanda start with investigating what rpm the generator needs. Perhaps 3600 rpm. This is 60 rounds per second.
1 kW is 10 metric tones falling 1cm/ second.
Now you know that 1cm needs to become 60 rps.
With a 20mm generator gear you get approx. 60cm per turn.
So 1cm need so become 3600cm thus your gearing needs to be approximately 1:3600 or 3600:1 depending on how you view it.
You need a generator with lower working rpm but the theory is the same.
For an approximate calculation,
100 yards = 91.44 metres
Gravitational field strength = 9.8
The potential energy of 10 tonnes at 100 yards height is
mass x height x g.f.e
= 10,000 x 91.44 x 9.8 = 8.9 MJ = 2.5kWh
So the gearing required for 1kW would drop the weight 91.44m in 2.5 hours
The velocity of the weight would be 91.44 / 2.5h = 91.44 / 9,000s ~ 0.01 m/s
For a winch drum 500mm in diameter, the circumference, pi x 1/2m = pi/2, would need to rotate once every 157s or 2.6 minutes which is 0.38rpm
The gear ratio required would need to match the ideal speed of the motor or dynamo to the drum rotating at 0.38rpm so for example 1:1000 would give a motor rpm of 380
Please check figures and adjust to taste :)
Various factors such as friction and amount of cable on drum will come into play too
@@danarves7452 nice calculation and presentation!
Please note that Dan’s energy equations gives you the answer to the feasibility of the project. A battery with 2,5 kWh weights 10kg and cost 400$.
@@per.kallberg it does the opposite in my opinion. 10 tonnes of concrete costs ~1400 dollars to store 2.5 kwh. That's just the mass. Then you need a structure that can hold 10 tonnes of weight all while moving it up and down in a secure way. Lastly the tower has to be 30 stories tall! All to store 2.5 kwh
"Train storage" seems more interesting.
It makes a lot more sense to use the terrain and rails.
Trains store far too little energy. I know the idea has been proposed, but it's 1,000x too small. A better idea is capturing potential energy from existing ore trains hauling from high elevation to low elevation since then you're actually generating energy and not storing it.
@@oisiaa rails are very efficient, you just need to find a hill the same hight as this tower and once you are at the top, you've stored the same energy.
At least in Austria it's already common practice that energy spikes from regenerative breaking of trains is used to accelerate trains elsewhere in the network.
@@turboconqueringmegaeagle9006 Not train on mountain with gravity effect, but vacuum O-shape tube with magneto-train, with kinetic energy.
Not only informative, but the world's most subtle comedian.
Very interesting 👍
Thunderfoot has an interesting view on this " invention"
I was going to say that too!. ruclips.net/video/NIhCuzxNvv0/видео.html
the guy that just compared fuel tanks and batteries and concluded that there is no way you can have a future with electric cars, failing to mention the weight or efficiency of the engine? he just likes to pretend he is smarter than everyone else while spamming decade old memes. recently stopped watching him, recommend you do the same.
@@davitdavid7165 electric cars dont have engines! Oh and Tesla's are crap in the snow.
@@dogwalker666 cars in general are hurt by snow. There is no way a selection of colder climate focused electric cars does not exist. Also electric cars use an induction motor that is more efficiant then the ideal(inpossible) internal combustion engine. Look it up.
@@davitdavid7165 mate not only am I an electrical engineer and know a hell of a lot more about motors than you, I also own a diesel/electric car and today had to tow a Tesla and a leaf out of the snow, and another electric only car that was completely flat and miles from a charging point. How do you carry a gallon of electricity to get it going? Yet my car didn't even slip once,