Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts • Hacker News Board

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#271

Post by mplewis » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #69

o_p wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesnt account the short duration of batteries, I have to replace them every time they go past their lifetime, so in the long term their cost is much higher

The heavy machinery with moving parts lifting thousands and thousands of tons is also going to need maintenance and wear&tear replacements. The problem with scale is that all these proposed gravity batteries need much, much more machinery than an equivalent pumped capacity pumped hydro or chemical battery plant.

This is something made easier by the fact that we understand how mechanical designs age. We've built high-standing structures with parts that move in a similar way that last decades. We understand how to maintain those structures without totally replacing them.

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#272

Post by onecommentman » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

rakoo wrote: post #48

As usual everyone is fixated on price when the real hurdle will be scale. If we're going to replace our existing fossil fuel plants we need at least as much capacity. A quick grep in the article tells me these guys have a plan for a 4MW plant that involves a 1km shaft. That's the same order of magnitude as a single wind turbine, which is already one of the worst ratio of power output per quantity of resource and land…

10E6 shafts is not a scary number.

There are about 10E7 active oil wells in the US.

https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/wells/

There are 10E8 private water wells in the US.

https://www.epa.gov/privatewells

So 10E6 sounds practicable and, as discussed previously, may be a significant overestimate of actual need. Suspect 50 year life cycle costs and various environmental and political externalities would be substantially lower for gravity-based solutions. But who knows?

Concrete requirements? About 10E10 tons of concrete are consumed worldwide each year.

https://concretehelper.com/concrete-facts/

Again, 10E6 doesn’t look so big, but might involve some engineering cleverness.

But 10E6 big, capital intensive, fairly generic things can justify a lot of engineering cleverness in that one generic design. Geotech would need a lot of thought.

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#273

Post by darawk » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:35 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #270

darawk wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is just a fungible unit of comparison for types of value, nothing more.

Is that a meaningful statement? I can rephrase to say that the comparator function for money has an ideological bent. It rewards the externalization of costs

Money is a unit of measure. Any other unit of measure you choose will be fungible with it. Money is simply a way of unifying things we care about and translating them into the same space.

In order to compare two actions, you need to normalize their consequences to make them comparable. This is a fundamental requirement of making decisions. 'Money' is simply the unit we choose to do that in our complex society. We can call it utility points or something else, if you want, but it's still the same abstract object.

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#274

Post by jb775 » Mon, Apr 26, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

bigsparky wrote: post #66

jb775 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dare to venture, need to follow deep rabbit holes. Look into: work of Harold Aspden (and his coworkers & previous research partners), plancks equation origins and drop offs, dewey larson physics, piesel electric effect origin and drop offs, the adams motor, ellen brown, what maxwells equation actually determines and where it selectively isn't being used

I think you are getting unwarranted downvotes. If you are someone with a dislike of information you can just ignore it... downvotes unnecessary.

I agree but honestly I'm used to it on HN. This place is a lot of smart people but also the type of people that suffer from severe cognitive dissonance and stubbornness.

They are the types that would ridicule Christopher Columbus for even considering the notion that the Earth wasn't flat...then after proven wrong go around telling people they had a strong feeling the Earth wasn't flat.

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#275

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 27, 2021, 5:44 AM UTC

axiolite wrote: post #210

cheschire wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish that cost basis wasn't the only consideration when evaluating energy storage, but we're so accustomed to money being the great equalizer that things without a financial cost associated are often overlooked. What is the $/MWh cost associated with mining for, recycling, and disposing of battery components? What about the third order effects of centralizing control over the fuel source within only a handful of co…

> What is the $/MWh cost associated with mining for, recycling, and disposing of battery components? A fraction of the cost of the batteries, naturally. > What about the third order effects of centralizing control over the fuel source within only a handful of countries[0]? The lead in car batteries is one of the most recycled materials on the plant. Your link is talking about lithium, not lead. Lithium-ion batteries…

[deleted]

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#276

Post by exporectomy » Thu, Apr 29, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

jb775 wrote: post #47

exporectomy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't repeat unsubstantiated rumors like that. Can you even name these disappeared scientists or know anything at all that could be used to verify those stories?

If you dare to venture, need to follow deep rabbit holes. Look into: work of Harold Aspden (and his coworkers & previous research partners), plancks equation origins and drop offs, dewey larson physics, piesel electric effect origin and drop offs, the adams motor, ellen brown, what maxwells equation actually determines and where it selectively isn't being used

Wikipedia tells me Harold Aspden lived to 84 years old. How was he disappeared? I don't see any mention of suspicious circumstances about his death or his body never being found.

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#277

Post by dopidopHN » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #159

dopidopHN wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note on what is currently existing with gravity. The suiss folks are gaming the west European energy market this way. When the French produce too much nuclear energy, the German have leftover and stop buying it 100%w Price go down. Swiss buy it cheap and pump water in their dam system with it. Inevitably, the french grid align and produce a bit less. Price goes up slightly. That when the suiss comes out, release…

You mean they are selling large scale storage and managed to turn a profit? That sounds great. They are first, but as we deploy more renewables, we'll need much more cases like this.

Oh it is great. I'm bitching about it because or friendly neighbors rivalry.

Re: Gravity batteries try to beat chemical ones with winches, weights, mine shafts

#278

Post by dopidopHN » Tue, May 04, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

hutzlibu wrote: post #145

dopidopHN wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side note on what is currently existing with gravity. The suiss folks are gaming the west European energy market this way. When the French produce too much nuclear energy, the German have leftover and stop buying it 100%w Price go down. Swiss buy it cheap and pump water in their dam system with it. Inevitably, the french grid align and produce a bit less. Price goes up slightly. That when the suiss comes out, release…

Maybe I do not understand it fully (ne pas parle de francais), but where do they game the system? You buy cheap when you have storage and sell expensive when demand goes up. Pretty much how the market should work? This way there is incentive to balance it out (by creating storage) - and in this case stabilize the grid. When the grid would become more flexible, so even homeowners can do this with their solar panels an…

You are correct, it's not gaming the system indeed. It's more something that they decided to do on their own, and rightfully so. It's a bit innervating for French tax payers to be on that side of the bargain. But at the same time, we have nuclear power plant, those cannot react that swiftly to market demands changes... it's all fair game. They actually provide some kind of buffer service.