Oh, wow, you actually pulled the ad? I personally didn't care too much, but that shows a tonne of dedication to your fans. Massive respect to you, Grady
@@randomdude9135 I'd go as far as saying Fuck the Ad model altogether. History has shown the Ad model gives advertisers the wrong incentives and they will eventually produce unethical, predatory advertising. Burninate the Ad model.
The ad in question was a baked in NordVPN advert. For more about the recent events surrounding NordVPN and the probable reasoning behind Grady pulling the ad (aside from community pressure) I'd suggest checking out what UA-camr JayzTwoCents had to say on the matter.
9:00 ~ Genius Boys, I am here for You! ~ Hello, from 800+5+5! {a better and older "order of operations" two hands of experience talking, hand +5 and hand +5}. None may pull more power than a "Tesla Bicycle Test", all USDOT #realiD drivers iD customers must take to have interstate reciprocal travel state iD exchange or to get on to interstates this test is required. The preferred #newreligion is 32 words for creation and god, and 20 of them for man, in all things everywhere. Whatever you can do on the bike test, you are then allowed 5\8 of 48-minute test, for a constant 24 hours flow. You can use a local battery to supplement and local buffer peak usage. The default for a test not taken or failed (local money-grubbers, and elder 62 year old plus parents) test is 20watts per hour. (5\8, 3\8) (#0.625, #0.375) (20+12=#1OfGodsChosenChildren.) (800+5*2 (#bartsimpson and #homer) is not 800+10 #halftruth, and not +20 a child or TV #witnesstalking.) What i experienced was that 3 #deepcyclebatteries and a 1976 #stingraycorvette, was all the electricity any one person needed for all their life, in 1998 to #2000AD (commercially #2is2 i would make it 4 batteries, i used a reflector dish radiant heater in winter, and would turn on the stingray corvette for an hour in winter, because space heater and water heaters are pigs. (One) 1 #deepcyclebattery was enough for come home, and watch TV and VHS etc, with a smart trigger turning on the Dodge 1500 Truck from time to time, when the 100watt light bulb dimmed i would get up and start it. Battery was a straight gator clips into a construction grade extension cord, no #directcurrent to house #alternatingcurrent converter, no voltage or ampere converter, gator clip two wires of a cut off male plug power cord, into a female end with triplicate splitter, that splits again = 5: #TV25inch, #RVfridge, #VHS, #100wLight Bulb, #60wLightBulb, 1Battery; and then 2 or 3 #deepcycle battery #stingraycorvette any random #spaceheater, #reflectorheater preferred and many more light bulbs for multiple housing units.) Next tool, decades later, the invention of #GameingRouters, Next Improvement WifiManagement Routers that limited the number of allowed connections, so that #QualityOfService could have a minimum expected bandwidth to each client at public eateries in 2007. What we want, is #gofish or #uno #ombre! Smart Meters, Quality of Service, Traffick Shaping, AMD Intel sleep cores, Basically the price you pay is the quality of service, produce constant power, clients have pre-agreed rankings, of those clients some get their power switched off, instead of brown outs, \zone dips still and option\, can do per customer. we have smart meters, with data over lines, telegraphing #QoS data to customers, and #NEST meters (#smartthermostats), etc reporting their heuristic behaviours consumer patterns. Assuming everyone has a car connected to their house, and quality of service #smartmeters, #smartgrids exist, the local buffers, should allow a pleasant much closer to #stepladder power control model. Sort of .... no definitely very surprised and impressed that automatics now surpass fixed ration gears for fuel-efficiency. Your video mentioned dynamic power output, while also stating a single power output exists as ideal, same logic from fixed ratio gear days (i know the gears are still fixed, and i do like continuous variable more, even if there is more slippage and wear, or torque limits, in power generation, is this an issue, or would consumables be too expensive=my answer is year yes, i prefer shaft drive to belt, even if belt is a more pleasurable experience).
@@keviloltsukru1278 I watch both channels, I love how Practical engineering focuses mostly on civic engineering, and real engineering is more about mechanical/aerospace engineering. They actually complement each other really well.
@@Sander_Datema it was a baked in NordVPN advert. For more about the recent events and the probable reasoning behind Grady pulling the ad I'd suggest checking out what UA-camr JayzTwoCents had to say on the matter.
@@Sander_Datema There was a massive data breach several months ago, granting access to all customer data they had. They only told the public about this a few days ago.
I want to note that your videos are almost standard college material for electrical engineers. I've been watching your channel for years and now have been sent back for a rewatch as homework for 2 different professors. You never fail to impress, and I hope to be back again soon!
Worked at a utility where we had wind turbines that drove the pumps to pump the water up. Then release the water through the turbines as needed. Seemed like a good way to use turbines that are lucky to get 30% or their rated power in normal conditions..
@@joelshor5787 Google "Bath County Pumped Storage". Worked well because it didn't mess up the grid with transients the way solar and wind does...it was "regulatable"...
4:18, I worked on the Taum Sauk reservoir rebuild design and construction. There is a fascinating story about the night the original reservoir failed and a family that had their house swept away. All four, including an infant...SURVIVED!
I noticed that the Tom Sauk reservoir was rebuilt very very quickly after a major disaster that would have ordinarily eliminated such an endeavor in public opinion.
@@joelshor5787 I suspect it might have had it been summertime. The park is well known locally as a SUPER popular State park. It's like a natural water park, thus attracting tourists from St. Louis. Prior to the failure of that dam, the RV and tent camping sites were within the path of this dams outflow as a result of the failure. As a part of the settlement Union Electric/Ameren had to pay, they were able to move the campsites out of the way of the floodpath, mitigating the possibility. Because it was in the middle of winter, only the park superintendent's family were at risk and they survived, thus making it less of a natural disaster and more of a cost of doing business.
I worked on that project as well and own property nearby. Did you know that although they don't actually MAKE any electricity there, as in turn coal or other fuel into electrical power, it is the most profitable plant that Ameren has by a very huge margin because they use power at the lowest rate to pump water up, and sometimes they actually get paid to take the power off the grid, then they turn around and generate at the very highest rates so the spread is huge.
@@christinacody5845 Not only that, but he only survived because it was cold out. As they say you aren't dead (and he had no pulse) until you are warm and dead.
One of the most important additions to the modern electrical grid. Great to see a layman explanation of it. I hope the public is made more aware of these demand-supply issues.
Well university lecturers have to give you the details, which are not so fun no matter which way you spin them. He just goes over the basics which anyone could get
I've worked at several pump storage facilities (consulting contractor/ engineer) and they are great in practice and theory. One downside is the amount of abuse the synchronizing main breakers and equipment takes. Unlike during generation where you can spin down the current load to a negligible amount before opening the brake, during pump these breakers interrupt full load and they operate several times a day. They require far more in depth maintenence at fewer intervals than a normal generation plant.
Here in Québec, we do something kinda similar: since we produce the vast majority of our electricity with hydroelectric power plants, we can use this to "virtually" store water. When wind / solar is generating power, we lower the control gates of the dam to keep the water in the reservoir and open them up at night. No pumping needed.
@Steve Severl reasons: Keep the water for winter time when peak power is needed; Sell our hydroelectricity to USA at a good price; diversify / stimulate our economy (we're building solar panel production capacities and innovative battery technologies for grid scale storage).
Here in California I believe Edison etc... also pump the water back up to the upper lakes when there is excess power. Basically using existing hydroelectric investments for storage.
I liked the video but disagree with the ideia of adding more wind and solar into the grid. There's already enough proof that they'll never be able to power a modern society. Their low power density and being an intermittent source will never be overcome. So, they're useless. Instead of burning billions on useless crappy the countries should focus human and financial resources on nuclear energy. Getting molten-salt reactors up and running. Operating at high temperatures, they'll be able to do another things besides generating electricity. I ready and ran the numbers several times and the reality is that nuclear energy is our only way out fossil fuels.
I'm glad you mentioned the efficiency. That was one question I was going to ask if you didn't mention it :). Great video! 70% is still pretty good all things considered.
Lithium ion is 80-90% efficiency, but it’s also terrible for grid level storage. Grid batteries like iron- or aluminum-air have much lower energy efficiencies, though also require much less space. Pros and cons.
hello again! I have one question: you mentioned energy density of one Lithium Ion battery is equivalent to your bucket 200km above ground. I'm a bit confused here: - AA Lithium ion at average 1.5V and 2.5Ah (you may have chosen a much larger battery), the energy is: 1.5 x 2.5 x 3600 = 13500 J - A 10Kg bucket of water would have to be as high as h = 13500 / (10kg x g) = 138 meters, and not 200 km. Did I do my calculations wrong here? Thanks.
I’m comparing equivalent energy density so you have to compare equivalent volumes of water vs. battery. Sorry that was confusing! I don’t have access to my calcs at work but I’ll double check when I get home.
@@PracticalEngineeringChannel What if you use a barrel instead of a bucket to create greater generating power and use several Hydraulic Ram Pumps to pump the water back up to the barrel? Could you run that experiment? If you had enough Hydraulic Ram Pumps going you would constantly have the barrel full without using electricity or any power source to move the water back up to the barrel. Hence, near 100% efficiency. Even if you had the barrel (or water reservoir) much higher up to generate greater power, you could build several Hydraulic Ram Pumps at different heights (at a 1 to 7 lift ratio) with buckets in your case (or smaller reservoirs) to move the water uphill to whatever the desired height. So in essence, you're moving water uphill without a power source and the power created from the main reservoir would run continuously; which equates to a battery that in being charged at the same time it's being discharged.
Hearing about pumped storage in terms of arbitrage rather than “it’s like a battery” really made the whole thing click for me. Thanks for the fantastic video, Grady!
Just discovered this video (10/21). Great stuff. I have been using a water powered pumped hydro since 2013 as part of an off grid domestic system. It began using a ram pump and has developed from there. We have approx 800,000 litres in storage now, at approx 24metres head, driving a micro hydro turbine via a 90mm penstock to charge a 40kw 24v battery bank . The turbine discharges into a storage which is also supplied by various water collection systems on the property. This storage then drives a water powered pump to return it to the upper reservoir. It is one of the most rewarding projects I have under taken at our place.
Congratulations my friend! Not only is it environmentally friendly, but it can be constructed out of materials, mostly from a hardware store. Don't think most people can build a lithium battery from scratch. Massive respect all around.
Actually, it is a very well known practice. In fact, I learnt about that in college, more than 20 years ago. Power generation companies would gain nothing from hiding this.
@@antofa999 He's not saying it's kept secret, he's not even talking about the power storage method. He's talking about the video description only. He's saying the wording of that line is strange for a video description. It sounds exactly like something an advertisement uses as a title/headline to make you click the link.
This is one of THE BEST applications of Human engineering.....it is pure benefit, at minimal cost and environmental impact. It is 'renewable' over thousands of cycles, THIS is what engineering is all about: Improving the world without impacting the world! Nice one Brady! Please focus on 'renewables', they ARE the new CIVIL, MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL, MECHATRONIC, CHEMICAL , engineering endeavours... many challenges, hopefully many responsible solutions . ENGINEER EVERYTHING!!
It's a facinating concept. We will see much more of that sort of thing. In Switzerland, they recently deployed an e-Dumper in collaboration with Komatsu. It is based in a stone pit in mountainous terrain. At the top, it loads 65 metric tons of stone. Whil bringing it downhill, the dumper generates so much energy that it can drive uphill again without any external energy source. The weight of the stones alone power this machine. Perfect efficiency. And the numbers are amazing as well. This machine alone saves us 50000 liters (over 13208 gallons) of Diesel and 130 tons of Co2 each year.
Thanks for the insight, Grady. My choice would be tidal generated power, My DIY solar system fills our needs quite well, and parts failure is backed up well.
Excellent demonstration of the value of engineering. The tanks were small, the connecting pipe way to small and the turbo pump very inefficient. That the demo worked at all is amazing. Actual pumped storage plants operate with an overall efficiency of 70 to 80%.
@@JorgTheElder so what? Land is cheap and water even cheaper. The concrete and the machinery are an up front cost. Fortunately we do not have to build these things in cities although that could be done.
@@hairybass480 Inverter exist... The best ones have about 10% loss in the process of converting DC to AC from 12-24 or 48V. I have a small 150W in my car for charging laptop but plan on installing full 48V system with large battery bank, solar panels (as much that can fit on the roof of my box car van) and 2000 - 3000W inverter so I have 220V AC that can run anything up to 16A :)
If I remember right, the last time I looked up typical efficiency of pneumatic systems it was down around 10%. That is for industrial systems though, not utility storage
There are two reasons to store energy (locally). Firstly, the obvious one - to be an energy source when needed but the other reason is to provide the quantity when needed - which might not be available from the supply at sufficient rate. CAES being used to start large IC engines. Air can be compressed say over 2 hours at a slow rate then released in 2 seconds at a very fast rate. Not only is this used for starting engines but also fitting tubeless tyres to wheels !
Grady, just started watching your channel, love the videos!! You have a great way of explaining complex engineering to the average person in a fun and informative way..Keep up the good work!! Tom Buffalo, NY
One of the best examples I've ever seen of a pumped storage facility is in northwestern South Carolina, the Lake Keowee/Lake Jocassee/Bad Creek system. Lake Keowee is the lowest, and largest lake fed by the Keowee and Little Rivers. Lake Jocassee is 300 feet higher and its 710 megawatt hydro turbines empty into lake Keowee, and can reverse flow to refill the lake. 1200 feet above Lake Jocassee is a third lake, Bad Creek Reservoir, which is fed by Upper and Lower Bad Creeks. Its 1065 megawatt turbines empty into Jocassee and can reverse flow to refill Bad Creek Reservoir. Lake Keowee itself is a hydro power generator with a 157.5 megawatt capacity, but its main function is to provide sufficient cooling water for the Oconee Nuclear Station's 2538 megawatt reactors. Jocassee and Bad Creek water levels are constantly juggled to keep Lake Keowee at full pond. Lake Keowee's generators serve as the backup power source for Oconee Nuclear Station.
California: “Man, these reservoirs can store LOTS of Water!” Mr. Drought: “Oh why hellooooo there. Lots of water you have…would be a shame if someone came along and .. stole it.”
PHES systems reuse the same water over and over again - depending on the upper and lower reservoir. They require little make-up water - only for evaporation and leakage losses.
Even less efficient - pumpstorage has a roundtrip efficiency of roughly 70% (or higher), P2gas so far the best lab results where ~70% - ONE Way. There exists quit a few already out in the wild, but their roundtrip efficiency is often lower than 30% even. It is one way, but one that, with the current technology, is only viable because of the extreme volatility of wind and solar as well as the unreasonable push of those technologies. Yes - unreasonable as they are so volatile that the endanger the electric power grid of whole countries and in total even increase pollution - great case study for that is germany (where they have many p2Gas facilities because of that). It is an interesting technology, but imo it should be use for energy storage but rather for energy conversion - there are applications where you do need those chemical fuels and on the long run it is a lot better for the environment to generate the gasses needed from air than pumping them out of the ground.
@@firstname405 Yes, significantly even so, because while wind and solar are renewable power sources, they are way too volatile and so they now have to run way more fossil-fuel-plants on standby. Most of the time not even producing energy but they need to be kept running to be able to deliver the power when needed. The nuclear power was great at providing the base-load very consistently and cheap (and still better for the environment funnily enough) Better storage methods are needed, but the governments follow the blinded Eco-groups that are driven by outrage and not facts. There is a nice article on the impact of different energy-sources done by greenpeace - despite their own numbers showing that even Chernobyl is better than Wind-power they say it is evil and should be banned...............
@@ABaumstumpf woah, that's crazy! Do you have a link for the coal plants running as back up but not providing energy? I'm aware of the benefits of nuclear energy but didn't realise they had to stoop THAT low
Solar and wind are not 'unreliable', they are variable. The forecasting of their variability is superb now too. 'Base' load plant are truly intermittent.
A friend and I built a similar model and found that the (still very low) efficiency was quite a bit better after we took apart the little generator and cleaned up the flashing on the plastic parts to remove obstructions to flow. Ours was intended to demo the automation, so it was PLC controlled with ultrasonic reservoir level monitoring.
Your inability to not fully understand this video's English without Subtitles has nothing to do with you being an Indian. Just making it clear. Why create unnecessary stereotypes.
Niagara Falls - on the NY side has 2 large intakes upstream a couple miles from the Falls with each one big enough to drive a train through. Those intakes fill up the 22 billion gallon reservoir at night when electric demand is low. They use the water in the reservoir to power the generators during the day to keep the water flow over Niagara Falls "spectacular". When no one is around to view Niagara Falls at night, the water flow is diminished since a large amount of water is being diverted through the intakes.
I live near the pumped storage facility in Michigan, and actually play disc golf in a park at the base of the upper reservoir. The lower reservoir is Lake Michigan itself, and when it was built it was the largest facility of it's type in the world. It also features the world's longest fish net as a barrier to keep wildlife out of the turbines.
Mine shafts are too small. We have one in a slate mine in Wales, UK. Well the pipes and turbines are in the mine, the two reservoirs are in the mountain above and the lake outside.
Pro Tip: check your collar before recording. If it curls up, just spray some water on it and blow dry it hot to flatten the collar. I grew up 5 miles from one of these facilities. Learned about this technology on a 4th grade field trip. Surprised we don’t utilize these more often but it guess it makes sense that they need to be located in locations with enough excess power for purchase and the potential demand to resell.
Would love to see some future content on renewables, viability of nuclear energy in the future, hydrogen fuel etc. As an engineer i love learning about this stuff and other engineering disciplines. It's always interesting to see what other people get up to. Cheers
@@DFPercush Hydrogen is a bad idea, it's very difficult to store and to handle. Much better to use carbohydrates, much denser and usually liquid at room temperature. You can get the CO2 to make them from air or water, there's plenty.
I started taking my scouts to the TVA Raccoon Mt pump storage facility on our trips to summer camp. On one trip prior to 2001, we took the elevator from the upper pool down to the generators. Over 40 floors 20' apart. Total height is near 1000'+. An education before its time.
second video in a few minutes with you.. didnt really care for the subject, but YOU makes it interesting. Thank you for being such a good narrator. will follow you more
Your thumbnail and 4:21 is the Taum Sauk reservoir (part of a pumped storage facility) in Missouri. It failed in 2005, and all of the water spilled out and washed away hundreds of acres of forest, also destroying a good portion of Johnson Shut-Ins State Park. The utility has since re-built and modernized the reservoir and power plant, and it continues to operate today.
@@mohammedraheem6288 Just that pesky lil transmission kerfluffle... Haha, that's kind of a massive issue particularly considering the Earth rotates while orbiting our star, while tilted. I mean I'd be all for it, but... We aren't close to an applicable technological solution.
@Claptrap Jesus well if we can find all the materials to produce the photovoltaic panels in outer space, then we would not need to send every panel from Earth's surface.
Using Gasoline (or other carbohydrates) as power storage would indeed be better as shown by the energy density graph. Problem is, generating that gasoline is too inefficient at the moment, basically the only efficient way to do it is with molten salt nuclear which could generate gasoline from water based or air based CO2 at competitive price (compared to the gasoline we refine from mined oil). But once you get a plant that churns out gasoline like that, you won't use it as energy storage. You'll run lots of them to provide as much power as peak demand and use all the excess to make gasoline and sell that to power cars instead of powering power plants. Then of course you'll probably get some grants to battle climate change and make even more gasoline from CO2 which you'll simply store somewhere so that it isn't in the atmosphere so you'll have even more plants and capacity for power generation even beyond peak demand.
Gasoline is a hydrocarbon, Sugar and starch are carbohydrates !😎 Pumped Storage-cum-generation systems function as extremely inefficient "batteries" because they involve two inefficient conversions (a) pumping water uphill and (b) regeneration by hydel. When you combine this two stage conversion, the overall inefficiency is the product of the two inefficiencies. This is therefore a bad strategy and will never succeed. Instead, particularly in monsoon lands like South Asia, if water is pumped up and drained out only for irrigation, then you double the system efficiency making it viable. Next, COMPLETELY dedicate all existing solar and wind generation ONLY to uphill pumping of monsoon rainwater from flood plains, into storage lakes at different altitudes, and intermittence of operation becomes inconsequential. And you do not need batteries any more! With reference to the Indian situation, there are additional facilitating conditions and benefits. Central India is a plateau - will allow artificial lakes at different altitudes, strategically located over roughly 30% of the Country's area and networked with metre dia or larger pipelines. Lakes with unlined bottom will also allow slow recharging of severely depleted aquifers. In most other countries, where the seasonality of monsoon or need for large irrigation demands do not crucial factors in water system design use this intermittent power source to raise level of drinking water supply, industrial use, etc into massive overhead water tanks.
I built a solar power plaant with molten salt storage a few years ago. A government funded billion dollar project. It's a total failure. They're declaring bankruptcy.
Nope no pumped storage near me... in Indiana our fields are flat and full of corn. The only pumping of water with energy that's done for us is solely for commercial use. But if I was near a plant like that I would consider visiting. Thanks PE for giving me something academically interesting. Your videos are pretty fun to learn from. I sure wish I could learn more in general though.. like spelling.. apart from having to look words up all the time just to spell them right.
I thought I came up with this idea in 10th grade! Then my science teacher let me know it was already a thing. Still not used in enough areas though. Also I don’t mind the ads, usually just skip em. Go out and get that money
Pumped Storage-cum-generation systems function as extremely inefficient "batteries" because they involve two inefficient conversions (a) pumping water uphill and (b) regeneration by hydel. When you combine this two stage conversion, the overall inefficiency is the product of the two inefficiencies. As a strategy this is therefore less likely to succeed. Instead, particularly in monsoon lands like South Asia, if water is pumped up and drained out only for irrigation, then you double the system efficiency making it viable. Next, COMPLETELY dedicate all existing solar and wind generation ONLY to uphill pumping of monsoon rainwater from flood plains, into storage lakes at different altitudes, and intermittence of operation becomes inconsequential. And you do not need batteries any more! With reference to the Indian situation, there are additional facilitating conditions and benefits. Central India is a plateau - will allow artificial lakes at different altitudes, strategically located over roughly 30% of the Country's area and networked with metre dia or larger pipelines. Lakes with unlined bottom will also allow slow recharging of severely depleted aquifers. In most other countries, where the seasonality of monsoon or need for large irrigation demands do not crucial factors in water system design use this intermittent power source to raise level of drinking water supply, industrial use, etc into massive overhead water tanks.
@@Noone-ig5ui FWIW, there are plenty of good uses for VPNs, they're just not the same as stated in some of the more fearmongery ads, as detailed in Tom's video. The severity of the Nord breach is often overstated, but their handling of it was awful. This breach alone wouldn't deter me from the company, but the lack of timely and responsible disclosure does, because it makes me not want to trust the company. I've known exactly what a VPN does for me and what it doesn't from the start but I've still used one for like 5 years (different one though, not Nord).
@Eve data breaches happen, it's now just a fact of being online. The bigger point is that you don't need a VPN. They give zero benefits for the majority of internet users. And I'm really wary of anywhere that will sell me three years of something in one go. That's an unsustainable business model.
You might wanna have a look at Norway's case - I believe they have numerous Pump storage facilities, with turbines in the valleys, normally running on melting water from the mountains. They usually buy surplus wind energy from Denmark at a very low price, and sell back hydroelectric energy to the danes during peak periods... Smart way to make a lot of money
I worked for Ameren at a gas fired turbine power plant and Ameren had a pumped storage facility (Tam Sauk) in Missouri. It appears your photo was of it. Something went wrong with the water sensors in 2005. It was over filled and the walls collapsed which flooded the valley with a billion gallons of water that created massive amounts of damage. The facility was run remotely without anyone being on-site.
All great until the storage lake fails. The failure in Missouri destroyed the Johnson Shut-Ins. Cant believe you didnt mention it, hate to say it but engineers do fail sometimes.
Gears and winches and weights cost more than water and dams and you can use water for other things Electric trains on an incline are being used with disused equipment and the carriages can be loaded with rocks
For hydroplant and river management, we have large and dvevelopped ways to drive water down (and up) in large scale. We don't really have anything in that scale for regular lifting and lowering of other, solid masses. Also, the density would be just a bit more in most realistic type, stone or concrete may be about twice as dense, and using iron or other metal are not realistic, the cost would be too much. Also, water need little to no maintenance and cheap, even concrete would need some maintenance and replacement, and way more costly.
Try find "Dlouhe strane" in mountain of Czech Republic, there is beautiful gravity battery of two lakes in mountains. It cost $0.27 bil., done 1996, after 6 years make clear profit.
Enter TVA in 1970 began building Raccoon Mountain Pump Storage Project, long before this idea had been discussed. Completed in 1978, it has been providing peak power since then. Every other year or so, we take the boy scouts by there on our camping trips. It provides a lot more electricity than some of TVA's dam's. The great advantage is that unlike a dam, that collects sediment over time, pump storage doesn't. And it doesn't take away a river for recreational opportunities.
I know this video is a couple of years old, but it's interesting that you mentioned pressuring old mines with air at the beginning yet don't mention using old mines for pumped hydro. This certainly would nearly eliminate evaporative losses.
I was under the impression that all other things being equal, 70% efficiency was still pretty dang good. I'm under the impression cars were like... 25%?
The efficiency for pumping up water is around 80% and 90% for power generation when letting the water flow back down. Multiplying those two numbers gets you 72%. It's way better than many alternatives to regulate the powergrid.
@@ChemistyStudent You have to look at the complete picture and 25% is the efficiency of the whole car, meaning 25% of the energy stored in the gasoline is converted into mechanical power at the wheels. Now, if you look at transmission efficiency you have to multiply the 70% with 96% squared, one for transmission to the plant and once for transmission from the plant, meaning you have a complete efficiency of around 66%. Still better than coal plants, who have a maximum electric efficiency of around 45%. Gas and Steam Combi-powerplants are a little bit better and widely used for medium to fast load regulation, they have a combined peak electric efficiency of around 60%. Thermal efficiencies are naturally higher, around 85% for coal for example.
Pumped storage develops relatively high efficiencies, partly thanks to economics of scale, specially designed components (pump-turbines, rather than machines designed specifically to be pumps or turbines, or very smooth penstocks to minimize friction losses), automated controls and operation at higher current and voltage levels (easier to overcome electrical resistance of wiring and magnetic components). If you want to know about a place that truly leverages pumped storage, look at Japan. Despite its proportionately small land area for its huge 127 million and highly industrialized population, a lot of the hydroelectric plants of Japan have nominal power ranging from 100 MW to 3,000 MW. The reality is that almost all of these big facilities are pumped storage. Given that most of the water is cycled between the upper and lower reservoir (rest lost to evaporation and leaks), the flow that can be sustained is far bigger than what can be sustained if relying only on the river discharge feeding the reservoir. This means that, conventionally, pumped storage can usually deliver peak power 8-10x greater than the power of an equivalent conventional hydro facility having the same head.
I'm glad I found someone in the comments talking about the Ludington Pumped Storage Facility! I was disappointed when it wasn't mentioned in the video. My dad and I spent some vacation weekends about an hour east of there when I was younger, and one day when we were out on the beach near the Ludington pier, he pointed south along the shore at some strange structure in the distance. It looked like a giant four-legged creature standing on the shoreline. I made a lot of very wrong guesses, and he wouldn't tell me what it was. Then we got in the car and drove south, parked, and then climbed a hill for a bit. When we got to the top, I was awestruck. Nearly 3.5-square-kilometers of water, on a hill. The weird structure he had pointed out in the distance was the crane that sits on top of the outflow gantry, so that water can be drained from various depths. If you ever happen to be in the area, it is an awesome place to visit. Seeing it in person, its sheer size is almost incomprehensible.
There are tests in Europe currently where water is essentially pumped into a large waterballoon under fields of grass. The added weight of dirt above it makes up for the lack of elevation difference in countries like the Nederlands and Denmark
I spent a week at Bath County pumped storage when it was being built inspecting switchgear. Totally awesome. I’ve been in nuc, oil, gas and coal plants but this was staggering.
If you got a cyber busines, chances are soner or later some dick will try to hack you. So, why is this such a big scandal that folks go "how dare you promote them on your vid!"?
Energy density is no problem. For grid energy storage. Nobody cares how much energy you can fit in a given volume. It's just the cost that matter and in that area, pump storage beat everything else including batteries.
I feel like, In Canada, we use large dam reservoirs of freshwater as our pump storage. We let water accumulate naturally in a dam's reservoir, and (automatically) start generating when the price is high enough or the reservoir needs to be emptied. I was told by a hydro worker once, that every drop of rain is water in the dam's pocket. It takes mere seconds to open up the vanes and get a generator timed to the grid and start producing.
Ludington, Michigan has a large storage system that uses Lake Michigan as it's lower "reservoir" and a lined reservoir built on the shore for the upper one. They also have a viewing deck that overlooks the upper reservoir.
4:20 is the after effect when one fails. The previous reservoir up there Taum Sauk burst Dec 14 2005. That big rocky scar is where it scraped the rock clean of vegetation. Fortunately it happened in the middle of the winter. Just down stream of that is a camp ground called Johnson Shut ins. If it had let loose on a summer weekend many hundreds of people would have died. The biggest design failure is that the thing was made of un compacted fill with a cement wall on top with out a hardened spillway relying only on sensors to shut down the pumps. How something like that with out a spillway got approved is criminal.
Agreed. The Taum Sauk Mtn reservoir was extremely dangerous due to negligent engineering & operation by Ameren-Union Electric. It nearly killed the Park Ranger & his family at Johnson's Shut Ins below the break. It destoyed a natural Fen ecosystem that might never return.
These aren't so much batteries as they are rechargeable super-capacitors. Batteries wear down over time, these will always be able to hold a fixed amount of water at a fixed height no matter how many times you refill them. Anyway, the energy density should be compared to THEM since it's lower for super-capacitors as well!
One of your example pics is right by my house. Irl the upper reservoir is kind of terrifying. It's a little mortifying to see a perfectly circular man made pit a hundred feet deep but it really gives you a sense of scale.
Oh, wow, you actually pulled the ad? I personally didn't care too much, but that shows a tonne of dedication to your fans. Massive respect to you, Grady
Well he still has patron support. So F the ads
@@randomdude9135 I'd go as far as saying Fuck the Ad model altogether. History has shown the Ad model gives advertisers the wrong incentives and they will eventually produce unethical, predatory advertising. Burninate the Ad model.
He did what?
Why did he pull the ad?
The ad in question was a baked in NordVPN advert. For more about the recent events surrounding NordVPN and the probable reasoning behind Grady pulling the ad (aside from community pressure) I'd suggest checking out what UA-camr JayzTwoCents had to say on the matter.
Great video Grady!
9:00 ~ Genius Boys, I am here for You! ~ Hello, from 800+5+5! {a better and older "order of operations" two hands of experience talking, hand +5 and hand +5}. None may pull more power than a "Tesla Bicycle Test", all USDOT #realiD drivers iD customers must take to have interstate reciprocal travel state iD exchange or to get on to interstates this test is required.
The preferred #newreligion is 32 words for creation and god, and 20 of them for man, in all things everywhere. Whatever you can do on the bike test, you are then allowed 5\8 of 48-minute test, for a constant 24 hours flow. You can use a local battery to supplement and local buffer peak usage. The default for a test not taken or failed (local money-grubbers, and elder 62 year old plus parents) test is 20watts per hour. (5\8, 3\8) (#0.625, #0.375) (20+12=#1OfGodsChosenChildren.)
(800+5*2 (#bartsimpson and #homer) is not 800+10 #halftruth, and not +20 a child or TV #witnesstalking.)
What i experienced was that 3 #deepcyclebatteries and a 1976 #stingraycorvette, was all the electricity any one person needed for all their life, in 1998 to #2000AD (commercially #2is2 i would make it 4 batteries, i used a reflector dish radiant heater in winter, and would turn on the stingray corvette for an hour in winter, because space heater and water heaters are pigs. (One) 1 #deepcyclebattery was enough for come home, and watch TV and VHS etc, with a smart trigger turning on the Dodge 1500 Truck from time to time, when the 100watt light bulb dimmed i would get up and start it. Battery was a straight gator clips into a construction grade extension cord, no #directcurrent to house #alternatingcurrent converter, no voltage or ampere converter, gator clip two wires of a cut off male plug power cord, into a female end with triplicate splitter, that splits again = 5: #TV25inch, #RVfridge, #VHS, #100wLight Bulb, #60wLightBulb, 1Battery; and then 2 or 3 #deepcycle battery #stingraycorvette any random #spaceheater, #reflectorheater preferred and many more light bulbs for multiple housing units.)
Next tool, decades later, the invention of #GameingRouters, Next Improvement WifiManagement Routers that limited the number of allowed connections, so that #QualityOfService could have a minimum expected bandwidth to each client at public eateries in 2007.
What we want, is #gofish or #uno #ombre!
Smart Meters,
Quality of Service,
Traffick Shaping,
AMD Intel sleep cores,
Basically the price you pay is the quality of service,
produce constant power,
clients have pre-agreed rankings,
of those clients some get their power switched off,
instead of brown outs, \zone dips still and option\, can do per customer.
we have smart meters, with data over lines, telegraphing #QoS data to customers, and #NEST meters (#smartthermostats), etc reporting their heuristic behaviours consumer patterns. Assuming everyone has a car connected to their house, and quality of service #smartmeters, #smartgrids exist, the local buffers, should allow a pleasant much closer to #stepladder power control model.
Sort of .... no definitely very surprised and impressed that automatics now surpass fixed ration gears for fuel-efficiency. Your video mentioned dynamic power output, while also stating a single power output exists as ideal, same logic from fixed ratio gear days (i know the gears are still fixed, and i do like continuous variable more, even if there is more slippage and wear, or torque limits, in power generation, is this an issue, or would consumables be too expensive=my answer is year yes, i prefer shaft drive to belt, even if belt is a more pleasurable experience).
@@dukelin5807 how about a first comment inside of a comment inside of a first comment hehe
Didn't know that you also watch his channel I love you guys both
Real engineering
@@keviloltsukru1278 I watch both channels, I love how Practical engineering focuses mostly on civic engineering, and real engineering is more about mechanical/aerospace engineering. They actually complement each other really well.
First time I’m realizing that these are two different channels.
Now that was good new knowledge I didn't have! Thanks.
hi mehdi
Sup mehdi
I almost feel bad about installing 9 solar panels this summer.
Ha ! I got you Mehdi ! I knew about this heheheh.
Hi mehdi
I visited the nearest pumped hydro plant this year for my birthday because of this video. It was an awesome experience - thanks Grady!
What like I'm not even super into things like this.but that sounds pretty awesome .they are huge things .hope your birthday was good !!
My face always lights up when Grady says “...and I made a little model to demonstrate this.”
this gentleman engineer is pure heart: an angel few we have
Credits for you to pulling the VPN ad. I've rarely seen people actually give up sponsor money :D
Seriously, you should get a lot more credit for this!
What was the problem with it?
@@Sander_Datema it was a baked in NordVPN advert. For more about the recent events and the probable reasoning behind Grady pulling the ad I'd suggest checking out what UA-camr JayzTwoCents had to say on the matter.
@@Sander_Datema paying fearmongerers to take responsibility for your data?
@@Sander_Datema and also see Tom Scott and Louis Rossmann.
@@Sander_Datema There was a massive data breach several months ago, granting access to all customer data they had. They only told the public about this a few days ago.
I want to note that your videos are almost standard college material for electrical engineers. I've been watching your channel for years and now have been sent back for a rewatch as homework for 2 different professors. You never fail to impress, and I hope to be back again soon!
3:49 “And i built a little mini-scale version of this as a demonstration”
-Immediately subscribed
Gawk gawk
You should be happy then. He does this all the time
2031: "And to show an example of this system, i've built a mini-scale nuclear reactor for this demonstration"
Worked at a utility where we had wind turbines that drove the pumps to pump the water up. Then release the water through the turbines as needed. Seemed like a good way to use turbines that are lucky to get 30% or their rated power in normal conditions..
Good way to stabilize and store a power that does not always appear when you need it.
Where was that? Excellent idea
@@joelshor5787 Beck 2 plant Queenston Ontario has pumped storage. The pump is 750 Mwatt when used as generator.
@@joelshor5787 Google "Bath County Pumped Storage". Worked well because it didn't mess up the grid with transients the way solar and wind does...it was "regulatable"...
@@georgemartin1436 you mean the bath countystation did not use wind ?
4:18, I worked on the Taum Sauk reservoir rebuild design and construction. There is a fascinating story about the night the original reservoir failed and a family that had their house swept away. All four, including an infant...SURVIVED!
I backpacked in this park! The destruction it caused is crazy to hike up the valley it made
I noticed that the Tom Sauk reservoir was rebuilt very very quickly after a major disaster that would have ordinarily eliminated such an endeavor in public opinion.
@@joelshor5787 I suspect it might have had it been summertime. The park is well known locally as a SUPER popular State park. It's like a natural water park, thus attracting tourists from St. Louis. Prior to the failure of that dam, the RV and tent camping sites were within the path of this dams outflow as a result of the failure. As a part of the settlement Union Electric/Ameren had to pay, they were able to move the campsites out of the way of the floodpath, mitigating the possibility. Because it was in the middle of winter, only the park superintendent's family were at risk and they survived, thus making it less of a natural disaster and more of a cost of doing business.
I worked on that project as well and own property nearby. Did you know that although they don't actually MAKE any electricity there, as in turn coal or other fuel into electrical power, it is the most profitable plant that Ameren has by a very huge margin because they use power at the lowest rate to pump water up, and sometimes they actually get paid to take the power off the grid, then they turn around and generate at the very highest rates so the spread is huge.
@@christinacody5845 Not only that, but he only survived because it was cold out. As they say you aren't dead (and he had no pulse) until you are warm and dead.
Free energy when it rains.
Exactly my thought. 😂😂😂
Also lost energy due to evaporation when it is sunny...
@@stephenshumaker8444 Rain compensate evaporation and infiltration.
@@agustinruizmoreno524 Yep, in a rainy area it does! Probably won't with Hoover Dam in Nevada.
@@stephenshumaker8444 hopefully shadeballs will help
One of the most important additions to the modern electrical grid. Great to see a layman explanation of it. I hope the public is made more aware of these demand-supply issues.
I wish University engineering lectures could always be as interesting as your videos. Keep up the great vids
Well university lecturers have to give you the details, which are not so fun no matter which way you spin them. He just goes over the basics which anyone could get
It's once a formula gets written down, is when the lecture always starts getting uninteresting.
@@electron2601 that is why you should study with people, and talk about interesting implementations on your "free time".
I've worked at several pump storage facilities (consulting contractor/ engineer) and they are great in practice and theory. One downside is the amount of abuse the synchronizing main breakers and equipment takes. Unlike during generation where you can spin down the current load to a negligible amount before opening the brake, during pump these breakers interrupt full load and they operate several times a day. They require far more in depth maintenence at fewer intervals than a normal generation plant.
Here in Québec, we do something kinda similar: since we produce the vast majority of our electricity with hydroelectric power plants, we can use this to "virtually" store water. When wind / solar is generating power, we lower the control gates of the dam to keep the water in the reservoir and open them up at night. No pumping needed.
So why would you need solar at all?
@Steve Severl reasons: Keep the water for winter time when peak power is needed; Sell our hydroelectricity to USA at a good price; diversify / stimulate our economy (we're building solar panel production capacities and innovative battery technologies for grid scale storage).
Here in California I believe Edison etc... also pump the water back up to the upper lakes when there is excess power. Basically using existing hydroelectric investments for storage.
I liked the video but disagree with the ideia of adding more wind and solar into the grid. There's already enough proof that they'll never be able to power a modern society. Their low power density and being an intermittent source will never be overcome. So, they're useless. Instead of burning billions on useless crappy the countries should focus human and financial resources on nuclear energy. Getting molten-salt reactors up and running. Operating at high temperatures, they'll be able to do another things besides generating electricity. I ready and ran the numbers several times and the reality is that nuclear energy is our only way out fossil fuels.
@@bryanhiebert1 hahahaha Solar in canada sounds a really really dumb ideia.
I'm glad you mentioned the efficiency. That was one question I was going to ask if you didn't mention it :). Great video! 70% is still pretty good all things considered.
Dinorwig www.electricmountain.co.uk/Dinorwig-Power-Station is reported to manage 75%
@Claptrap Jesus Its usually used to stabilise the grid so i would say yes ineficcient, but very important and well worth it.
As the video says, if you can get money more than you lose with all things considered. It's feasible to build
Lithium ion is 80-90% efficiency, but it’s also terrible for grid level storage. Grid batteries like iron- or aluminum-air have much lower energy efficiencies, though also require much less space. Pros and cons.
Its horrible in an absolute sense but pretty good in a relative sense
hello again! I have one question: you mentioned energy density of one Lithium Ion battery is equivalent to your bucket 200km above ground. I'm a bit confused here:
- AA Lithium ion at average 1.5V and 2.5Ah (you may have chosen a much larger battery), the energy is: 1.5 x 2.5 x 3600 = 13500 J
- A 10Kg bucket of water would have to be as high as h = 13500 / (10kg x g) = 138 meters, and not 200 km.
Did I do my calculations wrong here? Thanks.
I’m comparing equivalent energy density so you have to compare equivalent volumes of water vs. battery. Sorry that was confusing! I don’t have access to my calcs at work but I’ll double check when I get home.
@@PracticalEngineeringChannel Ah right! So basically you also assumed a water volume the same size as a AA battery. That makes sense. Thanks!
ElectroBOOM
Ooooofffff electroooboooom and all
Use a bathtub or large water trough and place it on a hill at least 200' elevation, then use hard plastic pipe...should be a better setup..
@@PracticalEngineeringChannel What if you use a barrel instead of a bucket to create greater generating power and use several Hydraulic Ram Pumps to pump the water back up to the barrel? Could you run that experiment? If you had enough Hydraulic Ram Pumps going you would constantly have the barrel full without using electricity or any power source to move the water back up to the barrel. Hence, near 100% efficiency. Even if you had the barrel (or water reservoir) much higher up to generate greater power, you could build several Hydraulic Ram Pumps at different heights (at a 1 to 7 lift ratio) with buckets in your case (or smaller reservoirs) to move the water uphill to whatever the desired height.
So in essence, you're moving water uphill without a power source and the power created from the main reservoir would run continuously; which equates to a battery that in being charged at the same time it's being discharged.
Hearing about pumped storage in terms of arbitrage rather than “it’s like a battery” really made the whole thing click for me. Thanks for the fantastic video, Grady!
It's very inefficient compared to battery 🔋
I was raised near one of these things, here in Germany. The elevation was about 300m.
For my fellow americans, its around 984~ feet
I heard you need at least 300 m or 1000 ft to make pumped storage practical and of course a good reeervoir.
@@awhahoo lol
Hahaha , it’s a bit like filling yr car up to go on holidays, then returning to the same bowser when yr need to fill up again.
wait, where?
i thought we had none.
auserdem: hallo.
Just discovered this video (10/21). Great stuff.
I have been using a water powered pumped hydro since 2013 as part of an off grid domestic system.
It began using a ram pump and has developed from there. We have approx 800,000 litres in storage now, at approx 24metres head, driving a micro hydro turbine via a 90mm penstock to charge a 40kw 24v battery bank .
The turbine discharges into a storage which is also supplied by various water collection systems on the property. This storage then drives a water powered pump to return it to the upper reservoir. It is one of the most rewarding projects I have under taken at our place.
Congratulations my friend! Not only is it environmentally friendly, but it can be constructed out of materials, mostly from a hardware store. Don't think most people can build a lithium battery from scratch.
Massive respect all around.
You should make a video of it. Sounds cool
The vibe of the first line of the description is like:
"How to store energy with this simple trick electricity companies don't want you to know."
Actually, it is a very well known practice. In fact, I learnt about that in college, more than 20 years ago. Power generation companies would gain nothing from hiding this.
@@antofa999 if anything, it is the opposite. It i much easier to build these storage facilities if you have public opinion backing you.
@@antofa999 He's not saying it's kept secret, he's not even talking about the power storage method. He's talking about the video description only. He's saying the wording of that line is strange for a video description. It sounds exactly like something an advertisement uses as a title/headline to make you click the link.
8:15 and mores the point if that energy is coming from solar that would otherwise be wasted then its still a net positive
Foster the engineer: Pumped up Storage
Pumped up lips. I had to do it hehe
Aaaall the other engineers with the pumped up machines, better run better run, outrun my innovation.
This is one of THE BEST applications of Human engineering.....it is pure benefit, at minimal cost and environmental impact. It is 'renewable' over thousands of cycles, THIS is what engineering is all about: Improving the world without impacting the world!
Nice one Brady! Please focus on 'renewables', they ARE the new CIVIL, MECHANICAL, ELECTRICAL, MECHATRONIC, CHEMICAL , engineering endeavours... many challenges, hopefully many responsible solutions . ENGINEER EVERYTHING!!
It's a facinating concept. We will see much more of that sort of thing. In Switzerland, they recently deployed an e-Dumper in collaboration with Komatsu. It is based in a stone pit in mountainous terrain. At the top, it loads 65 metric tons of stone. Whil bringing it downhill, the dumper generates so much energy that it can drive uphill again without any external energy source. The weight of the stones alone power this machine. Perfect efficiency. And the numbers are amazing as well. This machine alone saves us 50000 liters (over 13208 gallons) of Diesel and 130 tons of Co2 each year.
I'm gonna rewatch just to show support for your integrity.
Thanks for the insight, Grady. My choice would be tidal generated power, My DIY solar system fills our needs quite well, and parts failure is backed up well.
I have always wondered about this but never looked it up really. Thanks for the video. Like it was tailor made for my curiosity!
The Grande Dixence dam in Switzerland pumps also huge amounts of water from nearby valleys to prevent a loss of energy during low demands times
Excellent demonstration of the value of engineering. The tanks were small, the connecting pipe way to small and the turbo pump very inefficient. That the demo worked at all is amazing.
Actual pumped storage plants operate with an overall efficiency of 70 to 80%.
@@JorgTheElder so what? Land is cheap and water even cheaper. The concrete and the machinery are an up front cost. Fortunately we do not have to build these things in cities although that could be done.
well done pulling the ad mate, good decision!
I can only quote my boss: "as long as we can't store electricity in bottles we won't be out of a job". we build powerlines ;)
Actually you can store electricity in bottles, it is called batteries and you can buy them in any stores ;)
@@a64738 AC. vs DC.
@@hairybass480 Inverter exist... The best ones have about 10% loss in the process of converting DC to AC from 12-24 or 48V. I have a small 150W in my car for charging laptop but plan on installing full 48V system with large battery bank, solar panels (as much that can fit on the roof of my box car van) and 2000 - 3000W inverter so I have 220V AC that can run anything up to 16A :)
@@a64738 but no welding...
@@a64738 It is a matter of scale. I Gigawatt at 500,000 volts is 2,000 amps the generating capacity in USA is in excess of 1,000 Gigawatts.
Reupload🤔
Going to watch again❤
Tom Sauk Reservoir. If you haven’t looked that up, go do that. When it burst it carved over 20 feet of earth down to bedrock.
.the way you told the generation vs demand story pretty much sums it up...spot on. and effective use of infographics too...
I would love to see your take on compressed air energy storage (CAES).
If I remember right, the last time I looked up typical efficiency of pneumatic systems it was down around 10%. That is for industrial systems though, not utility storage
It's pretty bad from the standpoint of efficiency.
Ms. D Fong might have to school him on that subject-ua-cam.com/video/-QNwGuqh9O0/v-deo.html
There are two reasons to store energy (locally). Firstly, the obvious one - to be an energy source when needed but the other reason is to provide the quantity when needed - which might not be available from the supply at sufficient rate. CAES being used to start large IC engines. Air can be compressed say over 2 hours at a slow rate then released in 2 seconds at a very fast rate. Not only is this used for starting engines but also fitting tubeless tyres to wheels !
Wow, 70% efficiency is actually really high! Pumped water storage is pretty damned impressive!
Banks Lake is 76% efficient.
@@GH-oi2jf Even better :)
Batteries 🔋 are far better
Grady, just started watching your channel, love the videos!! You have a great way of explaining complex engineering to the average person in a fun and informative way..Keep up the good work!! Tom Buffalo, NY
I'm pumped about this video!
One of the best examples I've ever seen of a pumped storage facility is in northwestern South Carolina, the Lake Keowee/Lake Jocassee/Bad Creek system. Lake Keowee is the lowest, and largest lake fed by the Keowee and Little Rivers. Lake Jocassee is 300 feet higher and its 710 megawatt hydro turbines empty into lake Keowee, and can reverse flow to refill the lake. 1200 feet above Lake Jocassee is a third lake, Bad Creek Reservoir, which is fed by Upper and Lower Bad Creeks. Its 1065 megawatt turbines empty into Jocassee and can reverse flow to refill Bad Creek Reservoir.
Lake Keowee itself is a hydro power generator with a 157.5 megawatt capacity, but its main function is to provide sufficient cooling water for the Oconee Nuclear Station's 2538 megawatt reactors. Jocassee and Bad Creek water levels are constantly juggled to keep Lake Keowee at full pond. Lake Keowee's generators serve as the backup power source for Oconee Nuclear Station.
California: “Man, these reservoirs can store LOTS of Water!”
Mr. Drought: “Oh why hellooooo there. Lots of water you have…would be a shame if someone came along and .. stole it.”
Hi, I'm a bait fish, I need water to exist for no reason, flush all your potable water out to sea...
@@Edwardmodos hi, I’m flint Michigan. What’s potable water again?
@@embers_falling ouch :D
PHES systems reuse the same water over and over again - depending on the upper and lower reservoir.
They require little make-up water - only for evaporation and leakage losses.
This battery is genius! It’ll never wear out or break like a chemical battery. We’ve got one in Wales and it uses the natural mountains and lakes.
Your integrity is amazing.
If you are searching for video ideas:
Why not do a video on alternativ energy storage methods, like power to gas.
Even less efficient - pumpstorage has a roundtrip efficiency of roughly 70% (or higher), P2gas so far the best lab results where ~70% - ONE Way. There exists quit a few already out in the wild, but their roundtrip efficiency is often lower than 30% even.
It is one way, but one that, with the current technology, is only viable because of the extreme volatility of wind and solar as well as the unreasonable push of those technologies.
Yes - unreasonable as they are so volatile that the endanger the electric power grid of whole countries and in total even increase pollution - great case study for that is germany (where they have many p2Gas facilities because of that).
It is an interesting technology, but imo it should be use for energy storage but rather for energy conversion - there are applications where you do need those chemical fuels and on the long run it is a lot better for the environment to generate the gasses needed from air than pumping them out of the ground.
@@ABaumstumpf yeah
@@ABaumstumpf Wasn't Germany's emissions increase from shutting down nuclear and booting up the coal power again?
@@firstname405 Yes, significantly even so, because while wind and solar are renewable power sources, they are way too volatile and so they now have to run way more fossil-fuel-plants on standby.
Most of the time not even producing energy but they need to be kept running to be able to deliver the power when needed.
The nuclear power was great at providing the base-load very consistently and cheap (and still better for the environment funnily enough)
Better storage methods are needed, but the governments follow the blinded Eco-groups that are driven by outrage and not facts.
There is a nice article on the impact of different energy-sources done by greenpeace - despite their own numbers showing that even Chernobyl is better than Wind-power they say it is evil and should be banned...............
@@ABaumstumpf woah, that's crazy! Do you have a link for the coal plants running as back up but not providing energy? I'm aware of the benefits of nuclear energy but didn't realise they had to stoop THAT low
This is why dams are so great. Mother Nature refills the battery for free.
Except when a drought happens and you dont have other reliable sources of power other than Natural Gas.
There are no solutions...only trade offs.
Solar and wind are not 'unreliable', they are variable. The forecasting of their variability is superb now too. 'Base' load plant are truly intermittent.
Huge respect man, love your dedication
A friend and I built a similar model and found that the (still very low) efficiency was quite a bit better after we took apart the little generator and cleaned up the flashing on the plastic parts to remove obstructions to flow. Ours was intended to demo the automation, so it was PLC controlled with ultrasonic reservoir level monitoring.
its humble request pls provide subtitles, its slightly tough to fully understand your words.sir your all videos are very informative
They are available now (at least to me).
Your inability to not fully understand this video's English without Subtitles has nothing to do with you being an Indian. Just making it clear. Why create unnecessary stereotypes.
in the box sub titles there is a page of 180 languages choose one i do when its in Taiwanese.
Niagara Falls - on the NY side has 2 large intakes upstream a couple miles from the Falls with each one big enough to drive a train through. Those intakes fill up the 22 billion gallon reservoir at night when electric demand is low. They use the water in the reservoir to power the generators during the day to keep the water flow over Niagara Falls "spectacular". When no one is around to view Niagara Falls at night, the water flow is diminished since a large amount of water is being diverted through the intakes.
yes i was going to refer to that put in years ago not much said about it.
may be California might want to use that to pump water back up.
I live near the pumped storage facility in Michigan, and actually play disc golf in a park at the base of the upper reservoir. The lower reservoir is Lake Michigan itself, and when it was built it was the largest facility of it's type in the world. It also features the world's longest fish net as a barrier to keep wildlife out of the turbines.
2.24.23. Near 💁🏻♂️ Ludington Michigan🔃
HELL yeah for pulling the ad.
In the credits, I doubt the guy's name is actually Erik Språng. You've been bitten by double encoding!
Someone with the last name Gutierréz(sp) too,
grischard? from osm! fancy seeing you here
Erik Språng I recon.
lower reservoir: deep mine shafts. Upper reservoir: ground-level
Mine shafts are too small. We have one in a slate mine in Wales, UK. Well the pipes and turbines are in the mine, the two reservoirs are in the mountain above and the lake outside.
Working on a pumped hydro storage in Australia and you would not get rhe efficiency you would get from a lower and upper reservoir.
Pro Tip: check your collar before recording. If it curls up, just spray some water on it and blow dry it hot to flatten the collar.
I grew up 5 miles from one of these facilities. Learned about this technology on a 4th grade field trip. Surprised we don’t utilize these more often but it guess it makes sense that they need to be located in locations with enough excess power for purchase and the potential demand to resell.
Your channel is great , im a electric engineer, and that simple and on the point i see for the first time 😉
A good reminder that electricity ain't magic. there are complex compromises to all things
Pumped hydro is proven technology, but you end up losing 20% to 30% of the energy you store.
@@jessstuart7495 still better than 100% , don't you think ? ;)
@@MakisHMMY,
That's a bad comparison (100% loss). You can't lose energy you don't generate.
@@jessstuart7495 But you may just as well (e.g. solar)
We demand a chipmunk edit for tomorrow's upload.
Just play it at 2x speed
Would love to see some future content on renewables, viability of nuclear energy in the future, hydrogen fuel etc. As an engineer i love learning about this stuff and other engineering disciplines. It's always interesting to see what other people get up to. Cheers
Wonder what the conversion efficiency would look like to electrolyze water and then burn the hydrogen again... hmm
DFPercush I don’t have numbers, but its about equally if not less efficient than this.
DFPercush Would be better for small scale though just due to the space requirements and infrastructure.
@@DFPercush Watch the video on hydrogen on the channel Real Engineering, there he goes about the values...
@@DFPercush Hydrogen is a bad idea, it's very difficult to store and to handle. Much better to use carbohydrates, much denser and usually liquid at room temperature. You can get the CO2 to make them from air or water, there's plenty.
I started taking my scouts to the TVA Raccoon Mt pump storage facility on our trips to summer camp. On one trip prior to 2001, we took the elevator from the upper pool down to the generators. Over 40 floors 20' apart. Total height is near 1000'+. An education before its time.
second video in a few minutes with you.. didnt really care for the subject, but YOU makes it interesting. Thank you for being such a good narrator. will follow you more
reupload?....rewatched it 😊 just to support your channel 👍
My favorite part about Grady is that even though his collar is wonky, he still goes on.
Yay for getting rid of the VPN ads! At long last!
I work as an engineer at reversible fransis turbine plant.....I am impressed with how he explained the pumping
Your thumbnail and 4:21 is the Taum Sauk reservoir (part of a pumped storage facility) in Missouri. It failed in 2005, and all of the water spilled out and washed away hundreds of acres of forest, also destroying a good portion of Johnson Shut-Ins State Park. The utility has since re-built and modernized the reservoir and power plant, and it continues to operate today.
0:12
"Wind and solar are becoming more cost effective, but they'll always be unreliable and intermittent sources of energy."
Subbed.
What if we use space solar. The only prob I can think of is transmission then.
@@mohammedraheem6288 Just that pesky lil transmission kerfluffle...
Haha, that's kind of a massive issue particularly considering the Earth rotates while orbiting our star, while tilted.
I mean I'd be all for it, but... We aren't close to an applicable technological solution.
@Claptrap Jesus well if we can find all the materials to produce the photovoltaic panels in outer space, then we would not need to send every panel from Earth's surface.
Using Gasoline (or other carbohydrates) as power storage would indeed be better as shown by the energy density graph.
Problem is, generating that gasoline is too inefficient at the moment, basically the only efficient way to do it is with molten salt nuclear which could generate gasoline from water based or air based CO2 at competitive price (compared to the gasoline we refine from mined oil).
But once you get a plant that churns out gasoline like that, you won't use it as energy storage. You'll run lots of them to provide as much power as peak demand and use all the excess to make gasoline and sell that to power cars instead of powering power plants. Then of course you'll probably get some grants to battle climate change and make even more gasoline from CO2 which you'll simply store somewhere so that it isn't in the atmosphere so you'll have even more plants and capacity for power generation even beyond peak demand.
Gasoline is a hydrocarbon, Sugar and starch are carbohydrates !😎
Pumped Storage-cum-generation systems function as extremely inefficient "batteries" because they involve two inefficient conversions (a) pumping water uphill and (b) regeneration by hydel. When you combine this two stage conversion, the overall inefficiency is the product of the two inefficiencies. This is therefore a bad strategy and will never succeed.
Instead, particularly in monsoon lands like South Asia, if water is pumped up and drained out only for irrigation, then you double the system efficiency making it viable.
Next, COMPLETELY dedicate all existing solar and wind generation ONLY to uphill pumping of monsoon rainwater from flood plains, into storage lakes at different altitudes, and intermittence of operation becomes inconsequential. And you do not need batteries any more!
With reference to the Indian situation, there are additional facilitating conditions and benefits. Central India is a plateau - will allow artificial lakes at different altitudes, strategically located over roughly 30% of the Country's area and networked with metre dia or larger pipelines. Lakes with unlined bottom will also allow slow recharging of severely depleted aquifers.
In most other countries, where the seasonality of monsoon or need for large irrigation demands do not crucial factors in water system design use this intermittent power source to raise level of drinking water supply, industrial use, etc into massive overhead water tanks.
I'm more interested in the salt storage. I looked into it once and was amazed by the tech involved.
I built a solar power plaant with molten salt storage a few years ago. A government funded billion dollar project. It's a total failure. They're declaring bankruptcy.
@@matthewerwin4677 Tell me more
@@TheRABIDdude www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/tonopah-solar-plant-could-end-up-in-bankruptcy-developer-says-1865917/
This is the only possible and widely available and sustainable resource, hope engineers make a break through innovation here
Nope no pumped storage near me... in Indiana our fields are flat and full of corn. The only pumping of water with energy that's done for us is solely for commercial use. But if I was near a plant like that I would consider visiting. Thanks PE for giving me something academically interesting. Your videos are pretty fun to learn from. I sure wish I could learn more in general though.. like spelling.. apart from having to look words up all the time just to spell them right.
I'm here to like the video again :D
I thought I came up with this idea in 10th grade! Then my science teacher let me know it was already a thing. Still not used in enough areas though.
Also I don’t mind the ads, usually just skip em. Go out and get that money
Pumped Storage-cum-generation systems function as extremely inefficient "batteries" because they involve two inefficient conversions (a) pumping water uphill and (b) regeneration by hydel. When you combine this two stage conversion, the overall inefficiency is the product of the two inefficiencies. As a strategy this is therefore less likely to succeed.
Instead, particularly in monsoon lands like South Asia, if water is pumped up and drained out only for irrigation, then you double the system efficiency making it viable.
Next, COMPLETELY dedicate all existing solar and wind generation ONLY to uphill pumping of monsoon rainwater from flood plains, into storage lakes at different altitudes, and intermittence of operation becomes inconsequential. And you do not need batteries any more!
With reference to the Indian situation, there are additional facilitating conditions and benefits. Central India is a plateau - will allow artificial lakes at different altitudes, strategically located over roughly 30% of the Country's area and networked with metre dia or larger pipelines. Lakes with unlined bottom will also allow slow recharging of severely depleted aquifers.
In most other countries, where the seasonality of monsoon or need for large irrigation demands do not crucial factors in water system design use this intermittent power source to raise level of drinking water supply, industrial use, etc into massive overhead water tanks.
RIP NordVPN
Wait why is he pulling a Nord ad? I just bought 3 years worth.
@@Stealth55555 they got breached ua-cam.com/video/G1thc5DSHwA/v-deo.html
@@Stealth55555 this is a good video from Tom Scott explaining VPN is unnecessary ua-cam.com/video/WVDQEoe6ZWY/v-deo.html
@@Noone-ig5ui FWIW, there are plenty of good uses for VPNs, they're just not the same as stated in some of the more fearmongery ads, as detailed in Tom's video. The severity of the Nord breach is often overstated, but their handling of it was awful. This breach alone wouldn't deter me from the company, but the lack of timely and responsible disclosure does, because it makes me not want to trust the company. I've known exactly what a VPN does for me and what it doesn't from the start but I've still used one for like 5 years (different one though, not Nord).
@Eve data breaches happen, it's now just a fact of being online.
The bigger point is that you don't need a VPN. They give zero benefits for the majority of internet users.
And I'm really wary of anywhere that will sell me three years of something in one go. That's an unsustainable business model.
You might wanna have a look at Norway's case - I believe they have numerous Pump storage facilities, with turbines in the valleys, normally running on melting water from the mountains. They usually buy surplus wind energy from Denmark at a very low price, and sell back hydroelectric energy to the danes during peak periods... Smart way to make a lot of money
I worked for Ameren at a gas fired turbine power plant and Ameren had a pumped storage facility (Tam Sauk) in Missouri. It appears your photo was of it. Something went wrong with the water sensors in 2005. It was over filled and the walls collapsed which flooded the valley with a billion gallons of water that created massive amounts of damage. The facility was run remotely without anyone being on-site.
All great until the storage lake fails. The failure in Missouri destroyed the Johnson Shut-Ins. Cant believe you didnt mention it, hate to say it but engineers do fail sometimes.
It wasn't the engineering that failed at Taum Sauk, it was choosing to disregard instrumentation that caused the failure.
What about lifting something more dense than water for small-scale - like lead, iron, concrete - like the weights in old clocks
Gears and winches and weights cost more than water and dams and you can use water for other things Electric trains on an incline are being used with disused equipment and the carriages can be loaded with rocks
For hydroplant and river management, we have large and dvevelopped ways to drive water down (and up) in large scale. We don't really have anything in that scale for regular lifting and lowering of other, solid masses. Also, the density would be just a bit more in most realistic type, stone or concrete may be about twice as dense, and using iron or other metal are not realistic, the cost would be too much. Also, water need little to no maintenance and cheap, even concrete would need some maintenance and replacement, and way more costly.
Energy Vault, a Swiss startup that’s using cranes and concrete to store energy.
Look it up
Sometimes called gravel trains. Use energy to drive train cars full of rock up a hill, then use regenerative braking when power is needed.
Water is free. Lead, iron and concrete isn't.
Try find "Dlouhe strane" in mountain of Czech Republic, there is beautiful gravity battery of two lakes in mountains. It cost $0.27 bil., done 1996, after 6 years make clear profit.
Or "Chaira" in Bulgaria. It has an enormous 700 meters difference between the upper and the lower reservoirs.
Enter TVA in 1970 began building Raccoon Mountain Pump Storage Project, long before this idea had been discussed. Completed in 1978, it has been providing peak power since then. Every other year or so, we take the boy scouts by there on our camping trips. It provides a lot more electricity than some of TVA's dam's. The great advantage is that unlike a dam, that collects sediment over time, pump storage doesn't. And it doesn't take away a river for recreational opportunities.
I know this video is a couple of years old, but it's interesting that you mentioned pressuring old mines with air at the beginning yet don't mention using old mines for pumped hydro. This certainly would nearly eliminate evaporative losses.
I really like the research into other ways to store energy than batteries
Repeating my comment: Thanks for going hands-on on the efficiency of pumped storage. I had no idea it was so low
I was under the impression that all other things being equal, 70% efficiency was still pretty dang good. I'm under the impression cars were like... 25%?
The efficiency for pumping up water is around 80% and 90% for power generation when letting the water flow back down. Multiplying those two numbers gets you 72%. It's way better than many alternatives to regulate the powergrid.
@@ChemistyStudent You have to look at the complete picture and 25% is the efficiency of the whole car, meaning 25% of the energy stored in the gasoline is converted into mechanical power at the wheels. Now, if you look at transmission efficiency you have to multiply the 70% with 96% squared, one for transmission to the plant and once for transmission from the plant, meaning you have a complete efficiency of around 66%. Still better than coal plants, who have a maximum electric efficiency of around 45%. Gas and Steam Combi-powerplants are a little bit better and widely used for medium to fast load regulation, they have a combined peak electric efficiency of around 60%. Thermal efficiencies are naturally higher, around 85% for coal for example.
Pumped storage develops relatively high efficiencies, partly thanks to economics of scale, specially designed components (pump-turbines, rather than machines designed specifically to be pumps or turbines, or very smooth penstocks to minimize friction losses), automated controls and operation at higher current and voltage levels (easier to overcome electrical resistance of wiring and magnetic components).
If you want to know about a place that truly leverages pumped storage, look at Japan. Despite its proportionately small land area for its huge 127 million and highly industrialized population, a lot of the hydroelectric plants of Japan have nominal power ranging from 100 MW to 3,000 MW. The reality is that almost all of these big facilities are pumped storage. Given that most of the water is cycled between the upper and lower reservoir (rest lost to evaporation and leaks), the flow that can be sustained is far bigger than what can be sustained if relying only on the river discharge feeding the reservoir. This means that, conventionally, pumped storage can usually deliver peak power 8-10x greater than the power of an equivalent conventional hydro facility having the same head.
70% isn't all that low.
Wow, I went on that energy map then google earth. There's a huge pumped storage plant in Ludington Michigan (2 GW).
Yup... beautiful summer vacation area... great hunting and fishing and lots of Lake Michigan beaches. Hope to retire there some day.
I'm glad I found someone in the comments talking about the Ludington Pumped Storage Facility! I was disappointed when it wasn't mentioned in the video.
My dad and I spent some vacation weekends about an hour east of there when I was younger, and one day when we were out on the beach near the Ludington pier, he pointed south along the shore at some strange structure in the distance. It looked like a giant four-legged creature standing on the shoreline. I made a lot of very wrong guesses, and he wouldn't tell me what it was. Then we got in the car and drove south, parked, and then climbed a hill for a bit. When we got to the top, I was awestruck. Nearly 3.5-square-kilometers of water, on a hill. The weird structure he had pointed out in the distance was the crane that sits on top of the outflow gantry, so that water can be drained from various depths.
If you ever happen to be in the area, it is an awesome place to visit. Seeing it in person, its sheer size is almost incomprehensible.
China Japan and the US have the most PHES capacity for above 1GW sized installations.
There are tests in Europe currently where water is essentially pumped into a large waterballoon under fields of grass. The added weight of dirt above it makes up for the lack of elevation difference in countries like the Nederlands and Denmark
I spent a week at Bath County pumped storage when it was being built inspecting switchgear. Totally awesome. I’ve been in nuc, oil, gas and coal plants but this was staggering.
Yes I walked the tunnels briefly on a visit to Bath when it was under construction. An 18 wheeler could have been rolled into one.
Buy low sell high
Probably reuploaded because of the ****VPN ad controversy
Tom Scott started it?
I rem him making a vid on vpn
No, the controversy had nothing to do with Tom Scott. Apparently, a few VPN servers were hacked by an 8chan user
www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/nordvpn-plans-security-and-privacy-upgrades-after-hack/
@@bobsquaredme from what I heard it was just one server in Finland that was compromised last year.
If you got a cyber busines, chances are soner or later some dick will try to hack you.
So, why is this such a big scandal that folks go "how dare you promote them on your vid!"?
A hydro dam stores the rivers energy till the grid need it. So storage without the pumping.
Works great if you're on a reliably-flowing river. Can't always count on that, though.
Utility-scale batteries have just now surpassed pumped storage. Very cool to watch to progress of greening the grid!
5:55
everytime I watch this I love this particular animation, so pretty
Thanks for removing the ad
That visual reference on energy density is pretty depressing... We gonna need a miracle to kick our nasty hydrocarbon habit...
I recommend u read the comment from Domenic Datti
Energy density is no problem. For grid energy storage. Nobody cares how much energy you can fit in a given volume. It's just the cost that matter and in that area, pump storage beat everything else including batteries.
OMG I'm playing factorio and I know what you're talking about. 😂🤣
I feel like, In Canada, we use large dam reservoirs of freshwater as our pump storage. We let water accumulate naturally in a dam's reservoir, and (automatically) start generating when the price is high enough or the reservoir needs to be emptied. I was told by a hydro worker once, that every drop of rain is water in the dam's pocket. It takes mere seconds to open up the vanes and get a generator timed to the grid and start producing.
Ludington, Michigan has a large storage system that uses Lake Michigan as it's lower "reservoir" and a lined reservoir built on the shore for the upper one. They also have a viewing deck that overlooks the upper reservoir.
4:20 is the after effect when one fails. The previous reservoir up there Taum Sauk burst Dec 14 2005. That big rocky scar is where it scraped the rock clean of vegetation. Fortunately it happened in the middle of the winter. Just down stream of that is a camp ground called Johnson Shut ins. If it had let loose on a summer weekend many hundreds of people would have died. The biggest design failure is that the thing was made of un compacted fill with a cement wall on top with out a hardened spillway relying only on sensors to shut down the pumps. How something like that with out a spillway got approved is criminal.
Agreed. The Taum Sauk Mtn reservoir was extremely dangerous due to negligent engineering & operation by Ameren-Union Electric.
It nearly killed the Park Ranger & his family at Johnson's Shut Ins below the break. It destoyed a natural Fen ecosystem that might never return.
Conservation of energy isn’t the issue, efficiency is.
Total efficiency = watt generated / watt consumed into storage.
Easy solution: build a Dyson sphere already
I'd happily take a Niven Ring
These aren't so much batteries as they are rechargeable super-capacitors. Batteries wear down over time, these will always be able to hold a fixed amount of water at a fixed height no matter how many times you refill them.
Anyway, the energy density should be compared to THEM since it's lower for super-capacitors as well!
One of your example pics is right by my house. Irl the upper reservoir is kind of terrifying. It's a little mortifying to see a perfectly circular man made pit a hundred feet deep but it really gives you a sense of scale.