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Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

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Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#101

Post by dharmab »

rpmisms wrote: post #95
furiousjulius wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this dam operation around here that pumps water up to a mountain top reservoir during the day when power is cheap and then lets it go at night when it can generate and sell the electricity for more money. I was always in awe of the lake size battery they created.

Maybe this could be applied to water towers? That's a lot of potential energy just sitting there.

Water towers are already used that way- water is pumped in during off-peak time and used during peak time.

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#102

Post by cobaltoxide »

rpmisms wrote: post #95
furiousjulius wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this dam operation around here that pumps water up to a mountain top reservoir during the day when power is cheap and then lets it go at night when it can generate and sell the electricity for more money. I was always in awe of the lake size battery they created.

Maybe this could be applied to water towers? That's a lot of potential energy just sitting there.

Not enough volume.

And you have to maintain water in the tower in order to keep the water distribution system pressurized.

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#103

Post by sigstoat »

rpmisms wrote: post #95
furiousjulius wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this dam operation around here that pumps water up to a mountain top reservoir during the day when power is cheap and then lets it go at night when it can generate and sell the electricity for more money. I was always in awe of the lake size battery they created.

Maybe this could be applied to water towers? That's a lot of potential energy just sitting there.

pumped storage systems are so large as to be geographic features.

there isn't much energy in a water tower. and that water is already doing work, pressurizing the water system.

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#104

Post by codeulike »

monkeybutton wrote: post #58
hourislate wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This scenario is a little different than a car but a Swiss company is experimenting with a Komatsu Dump Truck that basically recharges its battery using regen braking on it's trip down so it has enough power for the trip up. It actually generates a surplus of an extra 10kwh because the truck is carrying a full load down. https://phys.org/news/2017-09-e-dumper-world-largest-electri...

And going up it is empty. Its basically exploiting the fact that rocks at the top of a hill have higher potential energy than at the bottom. If you charged the trucks with wind/solar at peak times and used them to carry the rocks back uphill you could have yourself a very convoluted and mechanically fraught battery!

Like Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#105

Post by dcanelhas »

They would clearly have been better off putting a diesel generator on a trailer behind the tesla, for fuel efficiency.

4 gal in 20 minutes the video said? That's about a 160kW generator https://www.hardydiesel.com/resources/diesel-generator-fuel-...

I wonder how diesel generator + tesla compares to an actual diesel car.

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#106

Post by SLWW »

unknown_error wrote: post #60
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+3 miles hopefully didn’t include the energy spent going up, or the law of energy conservation would have been broken.

Maybe lapetitejort had better lawyers.

probably the first time a comment on HN has made me laugh.

I hope the prosecutor has enough leverage with the court! Justice truly is blind!

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#107

Post by Guvante »

rpmisms wrote: post #95
furiousjulius wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this dam operation around here that pumps water up to a mountain top reservoir during the day when power is cheap and then lets it go at night when it can generate and sell the electricity for more money. I was always in awe of the lake size battery they created.

Maybe this could be applied to water towers? That's a lot of potential energy just sitting there.

So I did the math and the average water tower holds something like 1/2 kWh worth of power. (50m tall, storage of 1m gallons, efficiency of 90%)

Hydro power storage is fantastic but needs truly ridiculous amounts of water and height deltas to make sense.

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#109

Post by rsynnott »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #27
Retric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even better just embed some wires in the road and charge everyone at highway speeds. Either ground-level power supply through conductive rails or inductive coils both work with different tradeoffs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_road

> Just embed some wires in the road... No offense but that is the most loaded phrase I've heard this week. That would be a major overhaul of both roads and electric car designs.

A somewhat more practical approach: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538030/germany-ehighway-...

Re: Towing a Tesla at 70 MPH replenishes battery at fast charger rates

#110

Post by lwansbrough »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #78
ols wrote: post #56

The most spectacular example of regenerative braking are trains that are used in Scandinavia, heavily loaded with iron ore that is transported to the coast: "In Scandinavia the Kiruna to Narvik electrified railway carries iron ore on the steeply-graded route from the mines in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on th…

The heavy iron ore is essentially a large battery storing gravitational energy. In a way it's just another natural energy source. Maybe in the future clean power can be generated from pulling down mountains.

This idea is sort of being explored already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itbwXMMkBQw

There's other ways of doing this too. Rolling a ball up a hill, inflating a balloon under water, etc.

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