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Comment on Gravity Storage 101 Or Why Pumped Hydro Is The Only Remotely Real Gravity Storage

Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

There is only one other gravity storage system that I know of that isn’t hydro, but it isn’t really a storage system. It is the Forterra ropeway used by a quarry in the UK where buckets of minerals are sent down a rope line similar to a ski lift. Since the quarry is uphill from the processing area, the energy from the material traveling along the rope is used to pull up all the empty buckets. Tom Scott did a YouTube video on it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiYXI1Tfu4

I don’t know why they didn’t just put the mineral processing area closer to the quarry, maybe it moved over time?

But anyway this is the only example of a viable gravity stored energy system that I know of that is not pumped hydro.

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holycrap@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Here’s a dump truck at a mine that charges the battery via regenerative braking when hauling the material down the hill then uses that energy to drive the empty truck back to the top for the next load. Same idea.

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- Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Cool, I hadn’t thought of that. Thanks!
  
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Ross_audio@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Interestingly we’ve been through this energy storage journey with clocks before.

You can see old clocks which are gravity powered instead of energy stored in a spring.

Basically we’ve already learnt that unless we’re using hydro, a massive amount of springs may be more useful than gravity. Especially given the space requirements of gravity powered systems

So springs?

What do clocks end up using today? Batteries.

Some with built in solar to charge their battery.

Battery storage is going to win out everywhere the environment isn’t already ideal for a gravity system.

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- egonallanon@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There are places and use cases where batteries aren’t a great idea for energy storage and there are environmental concerns. I’m interested to see how mechanical flywheels progress for energy storage as while they lack the density and have higher upfront costs they have much lower maintenance costs and longer serve life.
  
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  - Ross_audio@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Fly wheels are interesting.
    
    Especially as the turbines we currently put steam through are essentially flywheels holding momentum for a short time after shutdown.
    
    A flywheel that can turn for hours would be what’s needed. Whether lots of small ones like this:
    
    m.youtube.com/watch?v=_STnL0U9PyQ
    
    Or a massive one.
    
    Williams F1 even used a flywheel KERS system at one point. Batteries won there eventually too but if it can be genuinely useful in an F1 car it’s certainly possible they could be useful when weight isn’t a problem.
    
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    egonallanon@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Did Williams ever actually race the flywheel kers? I know it got used in WEC and some road applications.
    
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hallettj@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That’s pretty neat! But it seems to me it’s not storage because they’re not putting energy in to get out later. It’s more like mining naturally-occurring potential energy from the Earth’s crust. Probably that potential energy formed millions of years ago when tectonic plate activity pushed the rock up to its present elevation. So - it’s geothermal energy with extra steps.

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