Gravitricity - weight/gravity power storage
 

I just came across this youtube video and decided to share it. Its an interesting concept. The weight would have to be immense for this to work. But, it is an interesting idea and if it could be done economically sounds like it could be a good idea. I especially like the idea of converting old mining shafts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7a_LMM2_fE

I can never understand why they would suggest size limits. There's the household gravity light using a sandbag already. It sounds very similar to pumped hydro, just for different geography, etc. You could put one under downtown Regina very cheaply. You could also just use a narrow shaft and a cavity at the bottom, pumping water. One hybrid I like would use a kite to haul a tank car up an incline to replenish a reservoir. It could also work on a vertical rig. If the wind drops, they spill a bit and haul the rest.

Here's another one: https://vimeo.com/335818817?width=800&height=480

I wonder how DIY-able this idea is. For example, how deep and how much weight would it take to store about 10kwh (similar to a power wall)?

I have read of electrical utilities using stored hydro ti supplement production at peak load .

I get the idea this is not too common ?

Wyr
God bless

So I ran the calculations. The results are not too encouraging.

250 lb weight needs 10620 feet of travel to store 1 kwh.
1000 lb weight needs 2655 feet of travel to store 1 kwh.
5000 lb weight needs 531 feet of travel to store 1 kwh.
10000 lb weight needs 265 feet of travel to store 1 kwh.

Yes, those numbers are for ONE kwh.

My understanding is the hydro / water storage system is ideally a water tank / pond / reservoir / lake on a mountain / high place .

A combination pump / generator at a much lower elevation , with a big pipe between .

Water is pumped to the higher elevation and stored , using off peak power . On peak , the water flows down to the lower elevation , spinning a turbine which spins a generator . Producing power to help with on peak demand .

Kind of like charging & discharging a battery .

Wyr
God bless

Yeah, pumped hydro is a much better solution I think too. However, it's very location specific. If you had to create pumped hydro at many different locations I would imagine you would run into similar issues.

Pumped hydro is pretty much the only feasible method at the moment. The mine shaft thing sounds good but very few mine shafts are straight down of any length and they are generally small and they fill with water.

The energy vault thing... Not feasible at all. In fact there is a good video explaining why it's so bad.

If using a weight worked it would already be used.

We have a pumped hydro facility here in MO. They had a catastrophic failure in 2005 which sent a billion gallons of water flowing downstream, right through a popular campground and the very popular Johnson Shut-ins. Luckily it was at 5:00am in December so no one died. Ironically, someone did die in the construction of the replacement a few years later. Overall a very interesting story, and one I teach my freshmen about.

I think it's quite interesting how important Ameren knew this plant was. Important enough to spend quite a bit of money and build one in the same place as the disaster a few years before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taum_S..._Power_Station

Unfortunately we have many many dams/reservoirs in poor condition in this country along with other aging infrastructure IE roads and out power distribution network.

Big dirt work projects are extremely expensive so they tend to wait till it fails or almost fails before fixing it... Heavy equipment operating costs and the massive cost of the environmental paper work are a killer. Few realize how much of the cost of construction these days is the environmental impact study alone.

Here is another article on gravity storage. It goes over the few companies working on it. Interesting ideas!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/bat...ential-in-2021

That one has already been through the debunking ringer. It's another solar road scam. The science is clear it isn't feasible. It works but the return is so low making it extremely inefficient and it can't be made better.

Pumped Hydro is the only thing that works but building them is extremely costly and there are few places that they can be done and when it can the environmentalists make it nearly impossible to build unless they get their payoff.

Yeah, saw this a few years ago. Neat concept but my initial thought is that there's no way this can output enough energy to really be worth it.

The same power to weight ratio numbers apply to wave power.
Sailing our yacht at night with only the stars and compass to entertain one, used to wonder about using wave power to generate electricity, and as an even more direct use, to operate the pumps for desalination of sea water. In those day I could do the calcs in my head, not so much any more.
A seven ton yacht, up and down a wave X ft high every Y seconds.
If is pretty tough to beat batteries for economy as battery prices fall each year.

Looking at the project with cranes and concrete blocks got me thinking about... cranes. The ones in ports and other transfer depots. Real, working cranes, which to not lift thousands of tons to great heights, but instead lift thousands of cargo containers daily.

Do those cranes use regenerative braking when lowering cargo? How much energy do they use to pick up, move and lower a single container? And how much of that energy is recoverable?

Maybe not for storing grid power, but those cranes could have a flywheel, so that the energy from lowering one container could cover the lifting of the next.
But then, when not in use, those flywheels could help the grid...

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Check this one out.

It’s actually being built.

https://aresnorthamerica.com/


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That is pretty cool.

Definitely another cool idea. Man that's a lot of weight, 320 tons per cart!

I got this idea about small scale pumped hydro yesterday.
Instead of pumping water above the surface to store energy, why not pump it to the surface?
I'm thinking about a well, and wells can be tens or even 100 meters deep, so that gives quite a bit of head. On the surface would be a pond.

Of course, not good for all locations, since the well would have to be able to accept the amount of water that will be dropped while generating electricity.

Add a windmill that pumps water directly (like in old farms).

What do you think?

Edit: A quick search found this
Pumped Storage: Using Water Towers, Aquifer Well Pumps to Generate Energy During Peak Demand Periods