I’ve seen plans for a rail design that makes use of three large rail yards, one at the top of a mountain, and one on each side. Loaded train cars (and/or massive weights) would be dragged to the top during power surplus, and rolled downhill during shortage.
I hate thunderfoot, he’s a really annoying presenter, but I can’t argue with his science. He does a pretty good video about gravity batteries. I think his most annoying trait is he repeats an idea over and over and over again never letting it go.
We’ve been doing it pretty much since the dawn of civilization.
With modern pumps and a modern understanding of physics and fluid dynamics, it’s not a huge problem to design a system for pumping water up a slope.
So many kilowatts of motor power gives you so many meters of head. Check valves and appropriately sized pumps can allow for the movement of huge amounts of water. And with hydro storage, you’re not really running the system at full bore the whole time anyway.
Water also happens to be fairly dense stuff while being a fluid, so it can store a lot of kinetic energy in pretty much any container you put it in.
Brick of concrete also store a lot of energy, but require a huge building whose sole purpose is to move bricks around. Whereas hydro also allows governments to store valuable drinking water and get electricity when they need it.
Are wenches simpler than big ass hydro pumps? Don’t know…plus you have to deal with water evaporating and erosion.
The level of effort seems comparable.
Edit: The energy vault design is kind of brilliant in its simplicity. I had to look it up. Its a building full of modular elevator shafts that have huge weights in them. Each one has an electric engine at the top.
Excess energy means they pull the weights up. When you need energy, you regeneratively break the weight back down.
So essentially it’s one complex moving part at the top of each shaft.
That seems much easier to maintain than a giant basin of water, pumps to move the water up, turbines to capture the output, and big ass valves to control the flow.
You can put these anywhere…water storage will be environment dependent for a lot of reasons.
I don’t think either one is better, just depends on the location and application.
Heavy weights at the end of 100m cables blowing in the wind are incredibly difficult to work with compared to water pumps. It is why Crane Operator is a profession and Water Pumper is not.
I wish them the best. But this feels weird. Pumping water seems much easier than moving physical objects
I’ve seen plans for a rail design that makes use of three large rail yards, one at the top of a mountain, and one on each side. Loaded train cars (and/or massive weights) would be dragged to the top during power surplus, and rolled downhill during shortage.
That’s what I was thinking. And, they don’t really give any reason why their design is better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxGQgAr4OCo
I hate thunderfoot, he’s a really annoying presenter, but I can’t argue with his science. He does a pretty good video about gravity batteries. I think his most annoying trait is he repeats an idea over and over and over again never letting it go.
Removed by mod
It’s really not though.
We’ve been doing it pretty much since the dawn of civilization.
With modern pumps and a modern understanding of physics and fluid dynamics, it’s not a huge problem to design a system for pumping water up a slope.
So many kilowatts of motor power gives you so many meters of head. Check valves and appropriately sized pumps can allow for the movement of huge amounts of water. And with hydro storage, you’re not really running the system at full bore the whole time anyway.
Water also happens to be fairly dense stuff while being a fluid, so it can store a lot of kinetic energy in pretty much any container you put it in.
Brick of concrete also store a lot of energy, but require a huge building whose sole purpose is to move bricks around. Whereas hydro also allows governments to store valuable drinking water and get electricity when they need it.
The real question isn’t “why not build pumped hydro” but “why not build pumped hydro in Shanghai.”
Look at an elevation map of Shanghai and the surrounding provinces: Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui. They’re not exactly “mountainous.”
Hydro is easy, except when it isn’t
Are wenches simpler than big ass hydro pumps? Don’t know…plus you have to deal with water evaporating and erosion.
The level of effort seems comparable.
Edit: The energy vault design is kind of brilliant in its simplicity. I had to look it up. Its a building full of modular elevator shafts that have huge weights in them. Each one has an electric engine at the top.
Excess energy means they pull the weights up. When you need energy, you regeneratively break the weight back down.
So essentially it’s one complex moving part at the top of each shaft.
That seems much easier to maintain than a giant basin of water, pumps to move the water up, turbines to capture the output, and big ass valves to control the flow.
You can put these anywhere…water storage will be environment dependent for a lot of reasons.
I don’t think either one is better, just depends on the location and application.
Heavy weights at the end of 100m cables blowing in the wind are incredibly difficult to work with compared to water pumps. It is why Crane Operator is a profession and Water Pumper is not.
They’re enclosed. No wind.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Fair enough. If you find it simpler to operate. More power to you
But if you have mountains available, water does seem more practical
Yea, I agree with that. If the landscape is conducive to it, hydro makes more sense.
I think they’re both very cool chunks of engineering.