41–50 of 56 posts
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Just build water towers. 100m water tower is nowhere near as an extreme engineering as this.
a 100m water tower doesn't hold as much energy either does it? It's pretty light compared to concrete, I think.
Water towers could also be economical and straightforward to produce / maintain as power storage sites for a small community.
A large water tank of 500m3 on a high tower at 50M above an underground storage tank yields approx 70 kWh at best. Not much, but a bit better than nothing. Especially if the tower and upper tank can be dual-purposed. Of course in that case you'd lose some energy capacity to maintain water pressure head.
Correct, so if you want 70 MWh you need 1000x more water. 500.000m3 is merely a 80x80x80m cube.
Or to put it in different perspective, to lift it by 50m you need 2x this volume (another container 50m higher), which is 1.000.000m3, or 1M m3. The volume of the Pyramid of Gyza [1] is 2.5M m3. So that wouldn't even be the biggest building on Earth.
1 Ton of mass, at 100 m height, holds 0.2778 kWh of energy. 100 tons (3 bricks as per their design) - 27.778 kWH 100 x 100 Tons (300 bricks ) - 27.78 MWH. However, as per their design, not all bricks store the same amount of energy. The lower section of bricks would not be economical. Every Ton of Concrete, on average produces 0.9 Tons of CO2 during its manufacturing process. 1 MWH of electricity generation, on avera…
1 Ton of mass, at 100 m height, holds 0.2778 kWh of energy. 100 tons (3 bricks as per their design) - 27.778 kWH 100 x 100 Tons (300 bricks ) - 27.78 MWH. However, as per their design, not all bricks store the same amount of energy. The lower section of bricks would not be economical. Every Ton of Concrete, on average produces 0.9 Tons of CO2 during its manufacturing process. 1 MWH of electricity generation, on avera…
I wonder if these could coexist with solar farms in deserts and the concrete blocks are simply filled with sand and made there as a part of levelling the field required to install solar panels. A rough analogy would be the cut and fill process that is adopted while making roads. Similarly when a new plant is sited the sand is removed and used to create a storage system. The main idea is that it would reduce transport…
Assuming an average of 6 hours of sunlight, a 250 W solar panel can collect about 1.2 kWh of energy, or about 5 x 10^6 Joules.
In terms of potential energy that is
5000 kg x 9.8 x 100 meters.
Pretty huge for one solar panel.
I have been thinking about storing energy in underground storage tanks, with compressed air, but roundtrip efficiency does not work out.
Alternative method is to heat any material and use that heat later. Like, molten salt. But these systems are not suitable for domestic use.
Now I am exploring chemical methods to convert carbon to fuels using solar panels.
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We already have that in the form of LiFePO4 batteries. They last over 2000+ cycles, use no rare/expensive/conflict minerals and are safe. Also just recently they crossed the $100/kWh barrier in some markets: https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-... An ISO container(40ft) of those can store 10-15MWh. For the cost of the Astravets Nuclear Power Plant in Belarus ($11bln, 2GW) you could have 80GWh…
i have never seen retail prices of lfp batteries below 300$/kwh yet. Although i am confident near future versions of these batteries can last > 5k and may be even 10k cycles
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if these could coexist with solar farms in deserts and the concrete blocks are simply filled with sand and made there as a part of levelling the field required to install solar panels. A rough analogy would be the cut and fill process that is adopted while making roads. Similarly when a new plant is sited the sand is removed and used to create a storage system. The main idea is that it would reduce transport…
One of my long term thoughts on this was to think and mentally design a system suitable for one 250 Watt solar panel. Assuming an average of 6 hours of sunlight, a 250 W solar panel can collect about 1.2 kWh of energy, or about 5 x 10^6 Joules. In terms of potential energy that is 5000 kg x 9.8 x 100 meters. Pretty huge for one solar panel. I have been thinking about storing energy in underground storage tanks, with…
Its amazing how much energy a 250W panel outputs. Imagine storing energy from a 1MW wind mill (free pole? ;).
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That's not right. Refinforced concrete will suffer from environmental influences and have a durability from maybe 30 years. That means you have a cost overhead of 3-4% per year for the replacement value. Water tanks certainly have a much worse life time, given that they will start lacking after a short time and you don't only have to repair the tanks but also provide liquid to refill.
Cycling stress like that is going to dramatically reduce the lifespan due to tress fractures. I think they would be lucky to get 10-20 years from the blocks. Stress fracture are already a significant issue for concrete dams when you frequently vary the water levels, and this is much worse as different stacking is going to stress each block slightly differently every time. In theory they might be perfectly flat surfac…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if these could coexist with solar farms in deserts and the concrete blocks are simply filled with sand and made there as a part of levelling the field required to install solar panels. A rough analogy would be the cut and fill process that is adopted while making roads. Similarly when a new plant is sited the sand is removed and used to create a storage system. The main idea is that it would reduce transport…
One of my long term thoughts on this was to think and mentally design a system suitable for one 250 Watt solar panel. Assuming an average of 6 hours of sunlight, a 250 W solar panel can collect about 1.2 kWh of energy, or about 5 x 10^6 Joules. In terms of potential energy that is 5000 kg x 9.8 x 100 meters. Pretty huge for one solar panel. I have been thinking about storing energy in underground storage tanks, with…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i have never seen retail prices of lfp batteries below 300$/kwh yet. Although i am confident near future versions of these batteries can last > 5k and may be even 10k cycles
I studied the topic and it appears that none of the manufacturers/retailers is willing to sell at this price to consumers - they already sell all their stock to car manufacturers and the like.