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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.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:43PM (2 children)
The manufacturing / embedded energy in a railyard built up the side of a mountain is likely to be immense.
Also I'm not sure given present bearing technology if the embedded energy in a set of train bearings will be less than the lifetime storage of this gadget.
Lets optimize this a bit. Instead of solids lets leverage our knowledge of liquids and use a nice dense liquid thats cheap and mostly safe. I was going to suggest liq mercury but how about Dihydrogen Monoxide? Its mostly safe although consuming too much will kill people and its an inhalation hazard.
So instead of putting the liq H2O in tank cars, F it, lets use pipes. And instead of a goofy railyard lets use a pale imitation of the God Emperors Big Beautiful Wall to hold back the pressure.
There's another interesting optimization which is to locate this gadget in areas of naturally high concentration. In fact we can leverage and synergy the local biological systems by relying on natural condensation of the Dihydrogen Monoxide to accumulate behind the Big Beautiful Wall.
Somehow, this upgrade of the gravity train using wall / pipes / dihydrogen monoxide working fluid reminds me of something I've seen before, but I'm not sure what.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
Well Sheeeeiiiiiiii....
Great minds thinking alike and all that.
(Score: 2) by qzm on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:55PM
Because building a large watertight containment area is free.. Nice to know.
Just perhaps different situations call for different solutions?
Although this one is poorly designed. You would use more dumb weight cars.
And to the people comparing scale to dams.. This is competition to a tesla battery farm, not the hoover dam. Sigh.
Still.. Badly designed