Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
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Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
#2And these systems are way larger, more dangerous (wind) and not as efficient as magnetic bearing flywheels.
Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
#3Gravity based battery, stuffed full of lithium ion batteries?
Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
#4This is a clever system. I remember reading about a similar system in Australia that used excess solar power to lift giant concrete bricks, and then these bricks were lowered to the ground in the evenings to drive generators.
Not sure if this is the same one I read about, but it's the same concept: https://energyvault.com/
Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
#5Gravity based battery, stuffed full of lithium ion batteries?
No - it's just storing potential energy.
Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
#6And these systems are way larger, more dangerous (wind) and not as efficient as magnetic bearing flywheels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Yeah, if you do the math, it turns out that you need impractically large weights lifted to unreasonable height. Like, suppose you’re lifting 100 ton weight 100 meters high. That’s a rather large and heavyweight system. How much energy you can store this way? Less than $5 worth of electricity, as it turn out.
This is basically the same as pumped water storage, but instead of immense amount of water you can pump between very large reservoirs, you’re limited to one solid weight that’s too light to store nontrivial amount of energy, but heavy enough to be significant problem from engineering perspective. It just doesn’t make practical sense.
Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
#7Gravity based battery, stuffed full of lithium ion batteries?
Covered with solar panels and shaped into a giant flywheel?
Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts
#8And these systems are way larger, more dangerous (wind) and not as efficient as magnetic bearing flywheels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage
Now I want one. Home powered by solar and a flywheel is so retro-future. How does your house get electricity? Oh, power from the sun gets this flywheel spinning super fast and then it slows down and powers the house all night.