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posted by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-aboard dept.

A Californian company proposes using weighted electrically-driven rail vehicles on inclines to store energy. At times when the capacity of electricity supply exceeds demand the vehicles would be driven up inclined tracks, and when demand exceeds generation they are allowed to run down, generating electricity as they fall.

This link includes a video that shows a prototype vehicle (which appears to be built on a conventional locomotive chassis), an interview with a promoter, and an animation of a "farm" of these devices. There is a shortage of hard data, such as how much energy could be stored, for how long, and how steep the tracks are, etc., but a quick calculation shows that some thousands of these vehicles would be required for them to be useful. The control panel for this prototype has a power dial that appears to go up to only 20 kW. The promoter in the interview focuses instead on how the construction material can be recycled at end of life.

Motherboard story from 2016 when Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) got approval to build a 50 MW facility in Nevada.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:18PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:18PM (#702112)

    Back of the envelope time, a mechanical HP is about one electrical KW (to one sig fig) and a Big Boy 4-8-8-4 which is one hell of a steam locomotive, exerted about six kilo-HP to haul three kilotons (of coal, not a-bombs) over the Wasatch mountain range. So six megawatts will haul a hell of a large and heavy, yet commercially manageable and maintainable train around relatively normal ish looking tracks and coal cars. I don't think it really reasonable for this crazy gadgetry to vastly exceed that general mechanical performance of "tossing around trains at sane speeds and masses using about 10 MW continuous"

    So figuring this gadget the dude is building is of similar Rube Goldberg machine status to a 4-8-8-4 steam engine, I figure the "buncha gigawatts" refers to one train of about 10 MW power flinging a large but not ridiculous train load of ballast around for "hundreds of seconds" which at 4-8-8-4 speeds would imply a track in the single digits of miles long for a total energy storage (or expenditure) of single digit gigawatt-seconds. Build a track 100 miles long and make it steeper and maybe some parallel multiple tracks and yeah sure "gigawatt hours" of energy, sure, very hand wavy.

    Of course a beowulf cluster of 4-8-8-4 steam engines on an arbitrary number of parallel tracks would be impressive and both power and energy scale linearly with the number of steam locomotives. Given they weigh a million pounds each I would imagine moving a couple hundred in precise concert might generate interesting (measurable?) gravitational waves, up close anyway. I bet it would generate some seismic activity, at least.

    And of course building a cluster of a thousand 4-8-8-4 steam engines would require more energy to refine all the steel and build all that equipment than the system would ever store and provide over its lifetime. The "couple amp-hour" battery in my phablet, charged and discharged 1000 times before the battery dies (or explodes?) is a remarkably small equivalent of gasoline (although I forget the exact amount) and the energy cost of building and delivering my cell phone battery likely exceeds that. To some extent potential energy storage is kinda like "hydrogen fuel" its not a source of energy and its not a very good store of energy given the energy required to make it.

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  • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:58PM (1 child)

    by bitstream (6144) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @11:58PM (#702253) Journal

    Cog and rack railway is the way rather than normal tracks that can't handle much of a grade at all. Though, it will not relieve one of the issues of motor power.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:15AM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:15AM (#702260)

      Hmm I know there were geared cog steam engines but Shay engines were not cogged, only geared... pretty much, I think ... I'm so over the high tech imagery of this probably scam "invention" but I like the image of implementing it all with steam locomotives and commercial instant electric hot water heaters as boilers for the sheer spectacle of it. Imagine a thundering herd of 4-8-8-4 Big Boy locos brought back to life hauling Sisyphus sized car loads of granite up a hill only to spin gears on an alternator on the way down. I mean, if its not going to make sense and not going to work as a system, at least look cool as heck while not working.

      Some kind of sci fi book plot steam punk fever dream.