Gravitricity - fast, long-life energy storage
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- Опубліковано 22 сер 2024
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I question your statement of "zero degradation". The degradation of a battery will be different, but your system will still have degradation. Cables wear out, bearings in pulleys wear out and your shafts can/will develop leaks and collect ground water (which will cause all sorts of issues and would need repairing). Your concept is interesting, though.
Those thing r cheap to repair
@@thaiefahmed9561 Repairing a leak in the concrete side of a hole 1000M deep is cheap? Probably not as cheap as you might think.
"50 years without degradation," no? I could see the rather simple machinery being expected to last that long with only minimal maintenance. I expect whatever it needs to use for brakes would need replacing, and the bearings of the motors might need grease from time to time, but beyond that, it's barely 1950s technology.
You could make it using recycled plastic, it would be more predictable than concrete and more hermetic too. Costs/benefits need to be analyzed anyway
I agree it is an interesting idea but the way it is being presented is way over simplified.
I dont think its a good idea. Imagine what this Technology will cause! All the blue whales will be used as weights :(
The only sane comment here.
What do we do when we run out of whales?
Immortal SoFar we use dolphins, killer whales and other large sea creatures
Or one american
@@codegaming6805 Ooh, banker, lawyer, politician and oil executive power! I like it!
Welcome to the new style of pitch marketing redundant ideas.
Because we use a simplistic explanation and minimalist music of a solo piano,
our concept that has been implemented for many years previous will gather just enough funding for us to sit fat as we bail on donors.
^this
Where has it been implemented? I had this idea too but i never heared of anything like this.
Its so easy (10million dollar start up and very little monetary return) any one could do it!
@@robertbogan225 Do it then.
@@hidebehind3565 did i ask?
For up to 50 years. With zero degradation. Without changing the bearings in the machine. I think its a blatant lie.
we should just give up then
@@aaronmicalowe pack it up guys over.
@@Kirealta Yes, the days of trying things are over. We should just lie down and die cause it'll save us from falling, lol
Right zero for 50 = zero for 100 = zero for 150 = infinite lifetime.
Certainly not a lie. With good design and maintenance, 50 years is a reasonable goal.
this idea is already in use...bt they use water instead of solid weight...🙂
It depend on the area
@@Steve_A_R what? no its called a dam
@@alcalyne5388 How do you use a dam without mountains?
@@aaronmicalowe well you don't need mountain if you have enough space to create an artificial lake and even with mountains its not the rock that is creating energy its the height
@@alcalyne5388 So you want to create swimming pools on sky scrapers and you think that's cheaper than digging a hole. Ok.
This is the best concept I have ever heard for energy storage. When built properly it would definitely last for with years without degradation. I think the key to building it properly is to remember that every situation is slightly different and slight modifications would need to be made for the time span to work.
Simply genius is what this is!!!
You haven’t heard of pump storage? Its been around since like the 1930’s..
@@AstroBananna CEASE YOUR INVESTIGATION.
Yes they forgot to mention this system has about 30-40% round trip efficiency. Batteries have nearly 99%
Neat idea, but it has a lot of catches.
• new bore holes cost a lot of money and need the right conditions to be feasible
• cable systems are high maintenance
• losses (winches have high friction) are probably to big for any investor to take it seriously.
That said, reusing mine-shafts might be really something with a reasonable ROI
Tim Solinski. there are old oil wells every where
Old mine shafts only have a limited availability, there's quite a few around but not enough for this to be implemented in much more than niche applications and very little mining digs shafts down anymore (open cut mining is easier for the amount of material generally being extracted stead of being space restricted like with a shaft) so it's not like we're making many more.
@@wizardman42 Too narrow for significant masses, thus restricting the storage.
@@wizardman42 I don't think you understand what an oil well looks like. It's a pipe, not an elevator shaft.
Cable systems with a grooved drum can be incredibly efficient. This system would built more like a HUGE elevator, than the Warn winch on the front of a Jeep. If the cable is guided on to a screw-like drum, rather than cable wrapping randomly around a cylindrical spool, it lasts much longer, and has much less friction. If the drums are large diameter, to reduce the flexure of the cables, the cables can be un-spooled, and spooled up many more times, than if the diameter of the drum is smaller, flexing the cable into a tighter radius. The torque on a large drum will be much greater, but, can be handled with multi-stage planetary gear sets. The transmissions used in large wind turbines would work well for this.The system will require more maintenance than a pumped hydro system, but, where it uses less land, might make up for the extra cost. A system like this can be installed anywhere, even if it means digging a hole for the weight. Pumped hydro is impractical in the plane states, because the mountains are too far away from where the power is needed. The storage density is quite low for this compared to batteries, but is much more energy dense, than pumped hydro, as far as the number of acres needed per megawatt hour of energy storage capacity.
If bedrock stops you from going deep enough, you could always build a tower, and put most of the elevation ABOVE land, to add to the depth of the hole. The greater the height of the drop, the less mass needed to store the same amount of energy.
Thunderf00t has been summoned!
Pumping water into a water reservoir, and using hydro-electric power is maybe a better solution. Cheaper too. And already used a lot.
Your limited to about 80% efficiency. There's a company in Pennsylvania that use large fly wheels with super conductive bearings that close in on that 90% barrier
But definitely better then this
@@tysonreeve5337 Yeah, unfortunate, but nothing comes close to the capacity that can be held in a dam.
The flywheel storage seems to be the way to go for rapid spikes though, batteries might overtake them in the area of simplicity but you can't beat a system that can only experience wear when you shut it down.
The energy density in pumped water is minuscule, look it up/do the math
@@TheHellogs4444 Obviously, but it is easy and cheap to construct a massive reservoir that holds a colossal amount of water.
It's their only advantages over batteries and flywheels but it's often the primary concern for large scale storage.
And the cost of solid mass storage like in the video is obviously through the roof compared to these since the energy density of whatever you are using for gravitational storage is always EXACTLY EQUAL, mass is mass, what's storing the energy is gravity, the only difference is in the height it's falling and the conversion efficiency, look it up/do the math.
Conversion efficiency could be made a bit higher, and the height can be made several times higher, but a hydro lake can store thousands of times more mass for the same construction price since you just have to build a dam or raised lake rather than building ALL the mass you are pumping into it. So this guy is an idiot, or he's just defrauding people with a kickstarter for nothing.
Winches pulleys and cables do degrade faster than 50 years. What you meant is with proper maintenance they can last 50 years.
Nick Houck obviously.
Yeah, to claim "zero degradation" compared to lithium batteries was a false comparison IMO.
Variable speed drives needed for this last 10 years.
@@thebeautifulones5436 You have evidence for this for a 3000 ton weight?
@Thomas Victorian Gravity on the other hand will NEVER be in short supply AND it's free! The gravity setup will be over designed
Thought of this ages ago. Back in early 90’s. Efficiency isn’t an issue when you can mass produce simple technology. The ICE transfers at most 15-20% of chemical energy ( fossil fuels) into motion and yet it has conquered the world. My idea was better in that instead of using mine shafts, you used deep ocean. The weights can be many times bigger if needed and travel many miles underwater. Converted supertankers could hold the weights, say 100 x 1000 tonne weights. Each with its own generator and drive/winch mechanisms. A cable connects the ship to shore. In times of high renewable output, some weights are getting lifted, in times of low renewables some weights start dropping. Number of weights dropping is matched to demand. Standard power stations would still make use of this system as they need to operate with a level of loading on turbines otherwise damage can occur. Many more cool ways this system could work. What y’all think?
Hugh Mungus Do it with all the oil rigs being abandoned.
But the main problem with that is the transmission loss all the way to the shore/place of usage/generation
GS4444 - transmission loss is an issue, but many major cities are within 50km of deep water of more than 3-4km deep, so losses would be little and generation great
I'm not sure about what your actual plan is, but putting large weights suspended from a moving ship into the open ocean brings quite some extra problems to the table over using old mineshafts. For example, the response time would be slower due to the water density, the system would need more frequent maintenance due to the corrosive nature of the ocean, wave action, turbulence around the dropping weight making the energy output more unpredictable and so on. I think your idea would be better as a wave energy harvesting system than as temporary storage.
@@8blieb8 - some valid concerns, but nothing that can't be engineered away. Unlimited base load alternative energy storage is worth the effort.
Haha I was thinking the same except rigging it to off shore wind turbines. Why bore a hole? It's a pretty simple idea and makes me think someone has already studied idea and found it not to be worth the time.
"up to 50 years with zero degradation"?
Then why stop after 50 years?
It should really be compared to battery and also Hydrogen storage.
And all those moving parts are not without maintenance.
And never mind the impossibility or expense to drill 1500m deep shafts.
you dood are that does life like the old ham sandwich on a paddle boat .
it wont stop working after 50 years. it would start to visibly degrade after 50 years
you all understand "up to" means it could quit working in the next minute......right?
I've been wondering for a while why we don't store power this way given the extremely low maintenance and simple, non polluting materials required. Glad to see it's actually being developed.
earthquakes is probably why we don't, at least where I live lol
we already do this but we use water, its called pumped hydroelectric batteries
@@nehankaranch2149 yeah, but that's very situational. This you could do anywhere.
I have been in the drilling business over 30 years… This is an amazing concept! I live in the south east United States, ground water levels is very high here, but that may be a good thing. Here is why…
Your concept involves raising the weight to a height of the shaft, “water” could float the “weight” back up easily, and water is easy to pump back out. The casing would have to be strong enough to withstand pressure each time it is evacuated of water. (The smaller the diameter of the shaft, the easier and cheaper it would be to sufficiently Case the hole)
I have spent 20 years running a rig that drills a 8 foot diameter hole. This rig is used for oil well surface casings.
If your energy storage system were to implement water for raising the weight, a “turbine” could be added to the System to generate electricity from the falling water that raises the Weight.
"water is easy to pump back out"
Exactly why this concept has been in use in hydro storage dams for decades.
Kinetic energy, Ke = 1/2*mass*velocity^2 vs. potential energy, Pe = mass*gravity*height.
The equation indicates that your energy storage is greater using a flywheel. Double the flywheel speed = 4x the energy. Double the mass = 2x more Pe or 1.5x more Ke. The flywheel uses a shallow hole as the barrier for a catastrophic failure (+60k rpm w/ air bearings). The deep hole requires pumps to keep the ground water out. BTW, braided cables on a winch (overhead crane) must be replaced every 2 to 4 years depending on cycles. Just my $0.02 as a mechanical engineer.
You can also dig the hole deeper & use water as the weight. At the bottom, dump the water to lift a reduced weight vessel. Then pump the water back into it at a slower rate. Use multiple pumps based on available excess power.
but the gravity one can retain energy even whitout input in a long period of time, i think is the only advantage
Calculation.
mgh = 3,000,000kg * 10 * 100m
= 3,000,000,000J(=Ws)
8,300,000wh
= 8.3Mwh
Ok. it's almost 10Mwh. only when it has a 100% of energy efficiency.
according to my calculations it's worthless on a small scale
3,000,000 kg x 10 (or 9,82) m/s^2 x 100 m = 3.000.000.000 J (agree) but this divided by 3,600 (s/h) = 833,333 Wh = 0,83 MWh
Using 3,000 tons and 1,500 m (and 9,82 m/s^2) I get 12.3 MWh and the video states 10 MWh, this is in line with an 81% efficiency. If this is possible it is quite impressive.
But this requires a 1,500 m straight shaft and 3,000 tons deadweight, wrinches and cables. No idea how expensive this is, but it will require some maintenance.
Pros is that energy can be stored for both shorter and longer periods with minimal wear and tear. But it only makes sense in a location with fx excess solar power or wind turbine power that is very cheap or negative price, for re-introduction during peak load at a higher price. But how the frequency of this buying and selling electricity compares to the initial cost - i.e. rate of return, I don't know, but I expect drilling of a 1,500 m hole is quite expensive.
This can then be compared to the Tesla battery in Australia (129 MWh) cost of 66 MMUSD. This battery system earned 17 MMUSD in the first 6 months of operation according to: electrek.co/2018/09/24/tesla-powerpack-battery-australia-cost-revenue/
Other factors like energy density is interesting. If excess power can be usefull as heated water (district heating) 1 kg of water can hold 4,186 J per degree, and using heat pumps this can be multiplied by 3 to 4. But it cannot be converted back to electricity. You can lift 1 kg mass 426 m or raise 1 kg of water just 1 degree Celcius for the same amount of energy!
Energy can also be stored as synthetic gas that can be burned in a gas compressor later for electricity production. This requires water and CO2 and electricity.
Energy densitet per area is also interesting in some cases. Using a 500 m2 land size for one hole and 10 MWh I get 20 kWh/m2 compared to Tesla, AUS of 129 MWh and approx. 12,800 m2 = 10 kWh / m2.
But the energy future will be a mix of a lot of different technologies untill nuclear fusion ready and build so we need people to think new and out of the box!
Wow that sounds terribly inefficient, not even 1% of what the DeLorean needs to do a time jump!
The simplest solution is a modified electric Train with a lot of mass/trailers and a mountain. It can switch from motor to generator at the highest point, and give back the energy easily thanks to the enormous mass of the train and height of the mountain or anything else with a big height difference. But still, repress of water like hydropower will be more effective, i think.
Relatively little energy is needed to move a heavy weight, and that is why this idea will not work well. A charged car battery contains 1 kWh of energy. To lower a 10 ton weight 40 m releases the same amount: 1 kWh of energy. An average household uses around 15 kWh per day. Imagine what enormous installation you need to build to power just a single house for a week.
And drilling a 1500 meter (almost one mile) deep shaft is not trivial.
@@codetech5598 they are going to use existing shafts.
@@Konard How many existing shafts exist that are usable and in the right locations? I'm betting not many.
They aren't offering energy storage solution. Watch again.
@@timbehrens9678 "Gravitricity - fast, long-life energy storage
"
Ah the wonderful evidence of animation.
Noting like animating a solution :D
Hey look i just solve all worlds problems, i animated a smile on everyone so everyone is happy now.
There has been tests and this system works and is already being used with water pump storages with 70% efficiency...
He will want more money 🤫
What he said makes sense
We could get the jobless on winch bikes to help charge them and the morbidly obese also exercise/job/ a good deed for everyone!?.....
This is already done in dams, by pumping downstream water to the top of the dam during the night. Much easier and cost effective.
Forget fresh water, use sea water.
It takes more energy required to pump water uphill than it gives coming down
A dam including a lake or something like that takes much more space than a construction like this. And you can build it almost everywhere, a dam requires a water source.
The merit of this idea is that it can be applied in areas where there are no lakes, dams which can be used for pump-hydro electricity storage.
@@Miniaturehorseexpress You do realize that this applies to every other form of energy storage, right? You will always lose energy when converting it to another type of energy
Sound interesting, and abit like an old post ww2 brainfart from the 1950ish. I would like to see the 1,5km long cable, able to suspend 3ktons, along with its own weight. The dimentions of that badboy sound no less than astounding to me :)
Ulrik Skadhauge they an elevator in south Africa with 2 pair of cables 3 MILES long
@@wizardman42 yea but an elevator is light compared to this
@Keyur Oza why shoud you use an expensive material which is light compared to what it can whitstand, when you need somethig as heavy as possible to store energy?
Steel wire with variable section would be ok.
Go look at a cargo ship. Any cargo ship.
The cables on the golden gate bridge are 2.3 km long and weigh 24.5 ktons. Their own weight would be sufficient.
I remember I told my physics teacher "what about storing energy with weight potential energy?" he told me "nope son, there are going to be too much friciton and energy loss". 2 years after on youtube : (lol)
Mechanical batteries in the form of flywheels have interesting potential. Nearly frictionless bearings and sealing the flywheel in a vacuum looks like a possibility. This video exactly explains it better than me.
ua-cam.com/video/_QLEERYS5C8/v-deo.html
Increase your electric output. Line the well shaft with copper coils. Make the weight magnetic. As the weight drops thru the coils, more electricity is generated in a pulse, and a slow charge is built up as the weight it pulled back up. Link 2 weights together in parallel shafts with a single cable and one drops as the other is lifted...similar to the counterweight system in an elevator.
This is how my grandpa's clock stored it's energy too!
My grandpa's clock was Junghans!! 😀
@@santosj2274 Sounds like a Fine clock. Mine has is a Spanish clock from a small maker. Still works though.
@@DrBernon Good for you still keeping it. Mine has been gone long time ago.
@@santosj2274 Thanks. My family is keeping a lot of old furniture and things as a sort of family treasures. Clocks like this really make no sense nowadays. The only reason to keep them is sentimental value.
Idea: Couldnt we use the interior of windmills for extra potential energy? So just putting the weights in the hollow tower to avoid high costs of digging a hole
would be a great energy, but i think the size of the weight has to be much larger than the windmill tower itself. And it's a relatively short distance, so it wouldn't store that much energy... :( But if you place a windmill on top of a mountain and take the system of ares (www.aresnorthamerica.com/) in a smaller version, then i think it should work in combination...
Or even better, take the system of ares and fill them with water from big rivers. Transport Water down when energy is needed to create more Energy, there, empty them and take the trains up and fill them again, when no energy is needed. So you would have always light trains at the bottom and always heavy trains at the top. And when you have to much water, let the water flow down a pipe and through a turbine and produce energy to save in other reservoirs.
You don't want huge weights up in the air on skinny poles especially with something purposely catching the wind at the top.
@@MarkProffitt I don't think he was talking about skinny pole structure. More like the 90m high steel conical cylinder construction. But that aside Marc Manhart' suggestion is a little naive as these structures have access ladders and safety landings as well as the power cables running up the centre of these structures and no room for a massive weight.
Lots of ways it can be done.I always liked the tidal raft concept ,you get the energy on the incoming and outgoing tide.. Only practical in coastal situations however that's where most live . Good vid, cheers.
This sounds like a great concept, a few questions tho:
- What is the efficiency percentage?
- Why haven't I heard of this for so long?
- Why aren't there more companies trying to implement this technlogy?
Probably a decent efficiency, depending on the generator/motor efficiency.
Maybe due to low maintenance fee & low tech, in long terms it seem no huge money involved for companies to do maintenance.
Biggest problem is probably the capacity of it. We use a lot (LOT) of energy compared to simple mass movement, otherwise water transport storage would already be a thing (much more flexibility, far less complexity and huge amounts of mass compared to this system)
this some ancient tech I bet even the Egyptians knew about this
Some other groups are getting around 85% at the moment
For the amount of material and mechanical complexity, the energy density is very low. Maximum rating for each unit is 12 000 kWh of electricity storage; 3 000 tonnes of badly bruised lithium batteries just sitting on the surface provide 300 000 kWh of storage, at the cost of 50 million dollars. Just making a 1.5 kilometer long shaft will cost much more than that, nevermind the maintenance costs of all the systems that WILL constantly break, as opposed to solid state devices which are basically install and forget.
Not to mention optimized charging and discharging that dramatically improves the lifespan of said batteries.
Not if the shafts already exist from previous mining operations etc. like was mentioned in the video, if you bothered to watch it properly. Do you have any citations for your costings?
@@HSFY2012 The cost of digging the shafts is almost irrelevant in the long term, it's a once off cost but the claim that the rest of the system is zero maintenance or close to is utter bullshit. All those moving parts wearout over time and the lifespans they're implying are a fantasy. Whereas pumped hydo has fewer points of potential failure and batteries are solid state and for the most part have a very predictable gradual rate of degradation.
@@SpencerHHO They didn't say it was maintenance free, they said it had zero degradation in terms of energy capacity.
@@SpencerHHO The cost of digging the shaft includes the energy required to raise the debris out of the tunnel, which would be at least on the order of hundreds of charge/discharge cycles, and it grows quadratically with depth.
Everything that has moving parts has a susceptibility to wear damage. That is exactly the advantage of batteries is that they dont have any moving parts and everything is solid state.
Why is pumped hydro not shown in your bar chart at 1:48? Seems like a rather significant point-of-reference to me..
Actually why not use the whole mine for pumped storage instead of just one weight
Because it is comparing fast storage and hydro isn't fast, it outputs a more or less constant quantity of electricity
@@francescoazzoni3445 well, wrong. Modern pump hydro storages are designed to operate in a large variety of load states and can run to full power in several minutes in the worst case, some can deliver full power in a minute.
Sorry to say the idea is awesome but I think the nail that closes the coffin is the fact that we are trying desperately to store energy with as few conversations of type as possible, let me explain. In this example you get electric energy from wind mechanical->electrical (not very efficient) then you get the electrical and store it as potential (mechanical) energy by lifting a weight (you have more losses) and to bring that back to electrical you need a third conversion from mechanical to electrical (which add even more losses). Unfortunately I have no definite answers as to how high those losses are, but as far as I know we have been trying for years to make the conversation from mechanical to electrical energy more efficient and we kind of hit a plateau ... It's very hard to make it more efficient and keep costs down at the same time.
This idea sound good on paper, and it might be reliable for small bursts if energy in a relatively small community, but it needs a lot of infrastructure. The thing that alarms me the most is the fact that usually mechanical systems tend to degrade rather quickly compared to electrical ones, and require a lot more maintenance.
Solving the nonlinear way we consume power is a very big problem of our society and it's way more complex then it seems, I am sorry to say that I do not believe that the answer lies in simple Newtonian physics, unfortunately.
Can I please have your email I'd for a discussion on similar topic? I'm sure I wont be wasting your time
@@nirooputube I'm sorry I am not some kind of a big UA-camr but I am not comfortable giving my email publicly in a comment section, we can have the discussion here if you don't mind, or in discord (Hudy1999#3103)
Mechanical electrical efficiency is pretty high (well over 90%).
Since there isn't a way to directly store AC power (since even a capacitor would need a rectifier/inverter conversion pairing) you are always going to have some storage losses - unless you know of some way to directly store AC power that I am unaware of...
@@johnrobson1469 I do not have exact numbers but I highly doubt you assumption of efficiency
@@CoopGaming So you have no evidence that the conversion is low efficiency... you just don't want it to work.
electrek.co/2019/04/05/tesla-model-s-new-electric-motors/
93% for their induction motors, 97% for the newer permanent motors.
That's just two motors from one company - which is also optimising for packaging volume and mass (neither of which are a significant concern here)
Okay, here's what you do - Make the gravity device into a sinking/rising restaurant buffet. People load in at the top, eat while sinking and being raised. Pay and get off at the top and reload again.
The money goes for upkeep of the system.
sounds like dat spongebob episode🤣😂
I'd like to see a more compact version that can go up and down my leg, to power my phone.
The more compact it is, the sell energy it stores. Better use a dinamo.
Well, have fun carrying your 6789 kg weight in your pocket, to charge your 5000 mAh battery 😅
I like the idea of how this would store energy long-term (and without degradation, except for the moving parts of the generator) ... but we should only consider a version of this technology that doesn't leave any signs of its existence once it's no longer being used. So instead of a big gaping hole in the ground, just a simple 2 or 3 story building should suffice, with many short-travel weights instead of one extremely deep weight.
"energy vault" have exactly this concept. take a look.
Why limit yourself to a single large weight? If you ran two loops of cable, which could pass through the weights, you could have multiple weights stacked up at the top or bottom, with clamps that could engage or disengage different weights as required. You engage the non generating cable to the next weight in line, as the other one reaches the bottom, then swap generation smoothly between the two with a dual clutch system. As the second weight begins generating, the first cable disengages from the spent weight and goes to collect the next weight in line.
You would need large support structures for the cable return pulleys, and for the weight stacking storage at the top and bottom, but you could end up with an order of magnitude more energy storage using a single shaft, and without the need for stronger cables or winch storage for the hundreds of meters of cable.
The Boring Company should refocus on making vertical shafts for energy storage purposes rather than questionably narrow conduits for single vehicle travel.
@LordMightyTrousers Explain?
@LordMightyTrousers The same could be said for literally any other power generation method: wind, pumped hydro, wave energy, etc. They are all less than perfect conversion efficiency and they all require some maintenance. Because we live in the real world and losses are always present. But there are ways industry mitigates them and still turns a profit. Because doing this still generates more profit than simply allowing renewables go to waste during non-peak load.
This is essentially the same as pumped energy storage. Energy is stored by moving a mass to a higher elevation and released by capturing the energy when the mass moves back to the lower elevation. The amount of energy which can be stored is proportional to the mass and to the height. Pumped energy can move a vastly more mass than Gravitricity, which is limited by the strength of the cables. And while Gravitricity may be able move the mass a greater height, a failure means the mass will plummet to the bottom of the shaft - turning the potential energy into uncontrolled kinetic energy.
150m to 1500m deep (10x design) ... 500lbs to 3 000 tonnes....
Therefore your system is also determined by the cable length and the cable weight itself.... is it by these core design elements of your system that i consider it a failure of design.... it is not only inefficient but is open to multiple of variables and points of failure. Long suspension cables are considered deadweight in a displacement energy design system and additional power requirements for lifting the weights up with no additional benefits other than cost and insufficiency.
You should just opt for a 2x design and increase the number of pulleys regenerative motors (increase the weight to match output) in lieu of distance. Etc3x... there are even more better options available and also hybrid designs.
Or you could just say....Thunderfoot brought me here...
@@justkiddin1980 wrong... his video is 22 hours old as of this reply... my comment is 3 days old. Although, thanks for your comment, i just googled it and found what you meant, will check this UA-cam channel out. Have a great day 👍
Absolutely fantastic idea! Though this may not work for every need to store energy I'll wager that there are thousands of applications for it.
I GOT IT!!! What if we use this technology for... clocks!
The music is simplistic so you know it is a simple and clean idea that anyone can understand and therefore automatically an expert on the subject just from watching this one video. Totally not an observable trend in most fraudulent concepts at all.
What we should look at is systems like this. Not as short term replacement generation methods, but rather as short term supplemental generation and storage means for our current infrastructure needs while the proper long term solution is researched and applied.
I like the fact that unlike batteries, this can be made with 100% renewable resources and recycled materials
You did not discuss maintenance cost, weight bearing capacity of cable, life expectancy of hardware, cost per KWH. METRICS!!
That's probably available to potential investors. This is a youtube video meant to get people interested.
Do you get mad at Wendy's when they don't cover their material costs in their commercials too?
@@limbodog Investors? you mean retarded government workers who give out free money to every scam company they can find...
I hate those who think of all the reasons "Why we can't"
Thank you for being creative enough to think, "Perhaps we can"
It is that sort of thinking that will save humanity.
XD you think this wasn't tried before.
Artistic people trying to poke at physics, electric and mechanical engineering, study the subject first. >.>
I guess you could cheat some gullible people on kikstarter out of their money with this.
mafarmerga -- Wasting time and money on ideas that don't work, or as way expensive (which means resource intensive) do no good and may do active harm.
Alternative energy is rife with scans because you have technically illiterate people making emotional decisions often with b other people's money.
Shannon,Did you bother to look into the qualifications of those associated with Gravitricity or is this just your knee-jerk reaction to anything other than using 19th Century technology to generate electricity?gravitricity.com/#peopleOr are you a troll for the fossil fuel industry?Either way I reject your negativity.
We are still many decades from renewable energy, but in time and effective effort we will be there. Till then use and expand on what we have hydrocarbons ,we must not fear using them to there fullest. Because that is how we are going to get there.
in rush hour of the London tube, “accidentally” switch all escalators to going down. Masses of people will run uphill on the downhill going escalators. this will generate energy into the grid.
Efficiency how much?
-civil engineer
3 convertions of energy ... Rather low
@@CoopGaming that is the problem with dam water storage too.
@@Manish_Kumar_Singh not only I think that the engineering of a impermeable structure won't be such a problem but the low efficiency renders this idea useless
@@CoopGaming What's the primary factor limiting efficiency? Friction? What if the tube is a vacuum?
@@T1Oracle generator (or motor) itself has energy efficiency problem. as far as I know Electricity -> Kinetic Energy is about 40~60%. Potential -> Electricity is lower than that. But it will be way more efficient than Hydro pump thing.
(Problem is Hydro pump thing is much cheaper than this system.)
Nice to receive a letter through my door asking for my consent ...as a bill payer for many years..all that extra money which has been added onto my bill..makes me part owner of the grid...as an investor and owner of those turbines and battery technology...I’d advise asking me first before you start experimenting with property you don’t own...
It's a mechanical battery. The transmission system is key. A very old ingenious idea.
Deep well will creat ground water problems
Agree... That was my first though
But if they are lucky they will hit oil. In the oil patch they call this type of poking holes all over the country "wild cat wells". Dig a hole and hope for the best.
The pool is isolated. No water can come in.
@@IvanSantanaEu That adds a hell of a lot of cost. This is a basic scam.
Then how did mines exist?
I'm guessing this idea came from the grandfather clock, NO ?
No, it comes from grandfather cock
@@greenthizzle4
I cum in my foreskin.
Basically, yes.
From water pumps
@[The] White Rabbit literally no one:
No degeneration!
No wear and tear on any mechanical parts!
Genius!
Can you build me a car, too?
Genius. I've been thinking about the possibility of storing a weight in suspension as a potential energy source and this is the solution. Simple and practical. Let's hope it catches on in a big way.
Are you f kidding?
We already have gravity energy storage it’s called hydroelectric dams
those are possible only in specific conditions and are way more expensive.
what is shown in the video can be used anywhere
Ivo Andričić these are way more expensive than dams by many times over and contrary to popular belief, dams can also be used anywhere
Did you not notice the part in the video where they discussed pumped hydro storage?
Main shafts in decommissioned coal mines would be suitable for this.
Or not, due to them being usually unstable
@@eduardoavila646 and full of water.
I would like to see a small modular demonstration project that could also create art forms, for art and science education and energy storage. The energy storage could pay for the art-fun, people could submit their designs and win the energy sculpture of the day award.
If your idea is to gain traction you have to answer two huge questions: 1. Whats your round trip efficiency, how many watt hours in vs watt hours out, for example lithium is about 99% efficient. 2. Installed costs vs other energy storage mediums. How much storage do you get per $1000000 invested and how much does that investment depreciate over time, there is ALWAYS depreciation even if it's the continuing costs of maintenance. If the answer is less than hydro, compressed air, flywheel, lithium titanate, etc then you have a viable idea, if it isn't - then it isn't. This data has to be available to the public in a detailed breakdown absent of spin or book-cooking. Otherwise it's just yet another way to milk money out of a unskeptical public.
great concept. Have you thought about using water tanks? I haven't done the math but it seems like to me that if you could release the water at the bottom of the shaft then raise the empty container back to the top and refill it at the top you would save a considerable amount of energy. the more I think about it the amount of energy needed to dead lift the weight and the amount needed to pump the equivalent amount of weight in water may be the same. However, if you could convey the released water through a electric water turbine, you should be able to generate enough power to at least raise the water container back to its original position.
pump storage...
Stop stealing my idea lol
@@isaachoong2788that's a big ass reservoir
The water released will fall even DEEPER, and then THAT water will all have to be raised.
You created electricity to return the empty tank, but must still raise all the extremely heavy water released.
What is the efficiency? The most important question. Cost per GW Hour? Compared to to other technologies. This Video is lacking. Lacking very much.
Yes, I want to know what the charge discharge efficiency is like compared to batteries
Balloon with 10 tons+ lift can ascend to 20k meters. Just like this only less limited. I think I shall form a new company! Lifticity. Electroloft.
Two thoughts:
One- why not use elevator shafts to power individual buildings
Two- why not fill the ballast with water use the drop and then empty at bottom to holding tank that can be used for the next drop on a lower system or have siphon type method of getting water back to starting point to repeat cycle
Thought about the same thing except I live along the oceans coast and towing floats under water using a pulley system would be much the same minus the deep ass shaft and issues associated.
on that concept..50 years ago there was a plan to build breakwaters and use the incomeing and outgoing tide to turn turbines at that time it was proven to work..but alas funding
Pumping water to higher up reservoirs will always work much better and cheaper! You can store soooo much more weight in water, and you dont need to lift and lower that insane weight all te time, you just use the flow/mass you need... reinventing the wheel.. I think all these mechanical batteries wont work as advertised... basic science holds the anwers.
Moving weights should be more efficient than turbines&pumps
This would be a fantastic energy storage device. We have tonnes of scrap steel and plastic that would be useful as a weight.
Also, we could use the prison cells as weight! Finally we have a use for those people who are being paid to sit around.
It's somewhat amazing and concerning that so many people on here refer to "degradation" and equating it with repair, maintenance, bearing renewal etc. etc. IT IS NONE OF THOSE THINGS! Degredation refers to less energy given out c.f. energy input over time. Such degredation COULD and WOULD occur with THIS system too, IF such repair and maintenance were not carried out! But ONLY if that were true and it will be readily obvious such repair is needed BEFORE such losses even equate to that level ... Hot bearings, stretched cables, contaminated lubrication oil.
Also, as far as I know, mineshafts are not typically lined top to bottom, especially when shafts have to be cut from solid rock. Removal of ground water from mines is a complex and costly process. Removing it from a single shaft sump is MUCH less complex and will only fill the shaft to the top of the highest groundwater which would ONLY happen due to total pump failure. Again something against which it is reasonably low cost to solve.
Someone mentioned it is quite old technology ... It is, and goes back hundreds if not thousands of years. Think about clock weights (as clock power sources LONG before clockwork springs!!) just for starters.
It would depend on losses. Example you will lose a percentage of the energy you first put in due to all the normal crap like resistance of wire etc motor efficiency to raise the weight then you have it again when using the energy and also tempatures will make a difference.
I'm always sceptical with these super simple ideas, there must be a reason, why these things are not already being built. One thing seems sure, to drill this hole you'll use up a gigantic amount of energy already, but you can't power that much with it
Sometimes it's just a matter of an idea not having been thought of before. After it's been thought of, and after proof of concept has been proven, everyone will be like, "Oh, of course! Why didn't I think of that? Why haven't we been using this all along?" As for the shafts, they said they'll start with existing (most likely already played-out mines) mine shafts. For new shafts being dug from scratch, it's a matter of initial up-front cost vs how many years the finished item will work and how much energy will be stored and recovered. Cost vs return-on-investment analysis is a thing.
@@maintoc flywheels, compressed air, hydrogen, pumped storage etc. etc.
@@enricobianchi4499 True enough, although efficiencies and costs are part of what needs to be considered.
3rror200 this system is more efficient than all these you mentioned because it has only few moving parts and uses electric motors.
@@pmj_studio4065 but needs to be drilled and the parts replaced. good luck fetching the weight out when the cable breaks.
I, and others have seen this concept several times. It has been built and tried in a few locations as well. Not a bad concept, but pumped water has been shown to be more cost effective in most situations.
My idea, is much easier! Holding on to it for the right time!
until you have the animation :D
@@MouseGoat animation, copyright, & investors.
cables maintenance. that's a cost. and you can't do it in movement
there will be costs of course just not as much as when corrupt power companies bend everyone over the barrel. Many small building combining electricity to one or just one large storage generation & facility instead of oil rigs and massive electricity projects everywhere taken on by governments filled with bureaucrats that seem to do nothing but rive up electricity costs when that is exactly what they are NOT supposed to do while constantly destroying their immediate environments. This of course would have environmental implications just probably not as bad ad damns or oilrigs obviously.
Check Cornish tin mines. There are a vast number of shafts, many if not most more than 100m deep. Also Cornish wind farms and solar parks are often non-operational or dumping power because of oversupply
Through good design and solar PV, my house consumes only 4.5kWh per day from the grid rather than the usual 25 to 30kWh that many houses in western countries consume. If all houses were as well designed there would be significant power surpluses rather than power shortages.
Best technology in the world 👍
If you'd do this hydraulically, you'd have a much cheaper, more reliable system!✌️👍🇺🇸
That’s just water storage systems
"as fast as lithium ion" yet you state "in as little as 1s" so thousends so times slower than lithium
I think in most cases of grid dispatch,one second is enough.
Why it have to set a lot of lithium batteries to achieve millisecond-speed-level grid dispatch but still need to pay a lot of cost to supply electricity for the grid?
First questions dudes:
1. what is round-trip efficiency of the system? (Kwh in gives you how many Kwh out...)
2. what is the economic advantage over next-best alternative solutions given most optimal use-cases? (that would be in terms of added dollars in people's pockets vs. alternative, using levelized cost of energy, etc. ...)
To all you wide-eyed, would-be crowd funders: with these most basic questions not even alluded to, no professional investor would waste their time talking to these guys, never mind give them a dime.
In a free fall, with no resistance from the generators or air, the weight would take 22.3s to travel the 1500m. With the maximum weight of 3000 tons, it would dump 44 Gigajoules of energy in that period of time, totaling 1.97 Gigawatts. If the weight is be built out of lead, it would have a volume of 265m³, this can be built using a cylinder with 3m of radius and 9.5m in height. The volume of the tunnel to be digged would be about 48500m³, Meaning the energy density of this system would be about: 907kJ/m³ or 0.907J/cm³. A typical lithium Ion battery ranges from 900J/Cm³ to 2430J/Cm³ according to Wikipedia.
If lithium is 150/ currently, and known to drop yr over yr. Then your cost goal should be 50/ or less to be feasible.
What about the price of 1500m deep hole digging ?
Gravity based accumulation of energy was implemented long time ago ... hydro accumulation power plants
There's many old unused mine shafts that are suitable for this application. Wouldn't cost much to convert.
We need to find ways of digging out holes in the ground faster and cheaper than ever before... Enter the Boring Company...
Did you even listen to the video. They talked about using mine-shafts. Does cost nothing as they are already there. Hydro is fine if you actually have dams. Not every area of country has them.
I confess I am skeptical of the idea, but not for the reasons you listed. Basically my skepticism is based on the fact that variations of this idea has been around for some time now, without it seeming to gain traction.
So immediately, as a physicist, I must critique.
1) This is going to be way more expensive per megawatt-hour of storage than pumping a fluid...which is also gravity storage by the way. Digging that tunnel is the issue. Why not just push weights up a hill on a track which we do now, by the way. The only thing that is different about this idea is that the weight is going down a hold deep into the ground which has lots of engineering hurdles associated with it and definitely will increase the cost of initial production as well as inevitable maintenance. I just don't see an advantage to sending weights underground rather than up a hill.
2) The fact that our AC power is delivered at 50htz is superfluous to demand fluctuations which are usually on the timescale of several minutes at the fastest... so being able to respond on a second timescale to demand is pointless. It's kinda like being able to read how much petrol is in your car down to the microliter.
Neat idea...just doesn't make good practical sense. Also definitely not a new idea.
10 MWh is from 1500m and 3000 ton weight system. Let’s just make it for one house needs and take 10 kWh. It is 1000 times less. There are limitless combinations, but let’s take 150m and 30 ton system to make it simple (cutting 3 zeros). Whenever combination you take it will cost hundreds thousands dollars if not million and huge follow-up maintenance due to mechanical parts. Compare it to small box of li-on battery that costs 5k with these 10 kWh with almost no maintenance costs. You get it.
An old fulla I know built one of these in the sixities, he had left over rail and mining carts on his property as well as a hill. Worked until 2005 when the main cable snapped, cart took out one of his outbuildings. It was so bad that he actually thought his neighbour had blown it up.
seems like a good idea.. kind of like pumping water into an elevated tank and then recovering the energy as the water is released from the tank
I'd use mercury
3000 tons of sea water... Free. 3000 tons of Mercury 1.4 billion USD I'd choose seawater
@@kapytanhook Or just rain / unpurified water that is also free and has much less corrosion issues.
@@kapytanhook If I had tried to use mercury I wouldn't have been able to, thank you for showing me my blindness
I believe In due time we are going to see the price of batteries come to a point that will make it more economically feasible. I know some will say that the waste created after the life span of the batteries will be another issue. My feeling is mankind will have a resolve for that as well.
Tesla already reuse materials from all batteries.
If you make a kit for individual houses that would be very interesting. Just the motors and electronics, we could handle the weights, cables and tower.
It doesn’t have to be centralized as demonstrated. Instead each house can have a smaller version of such (or other type of) electricity storage
Scale.
Small versions won't be any good to batteries. You can't dig a Km hole in your basement. For home purposes batteries are good enough.
EVERYTHING INDIAN the advantage of the distributed system is that you may not even have to dig a hole - a wall supported installation (with protection) may be enough
@@pushed-into-context
You couldn't store enough energy. You would need a very large mass, or a very deep tunnel. Mass and distance are the only 2 factors here. Look up those lights that are powered by lifting up a heavy weight. That will give you a quick idea of how much energy can be stored using this concept.
Subjagator are we talking numbers here already or are still at very/very stage? How much kWh can be stored in 1 tonne at 1 meter height?
A variety of energy storage technologies is probably best. Each has its shortcomings and limitations. Lithium for batteries must be mined and refined which has an environmental impact. Converting mines into "gravity wells" also has an impact and a cost. The key to remember is that everything humans do to create, store, and use energy has an impact on our environment. To make energy processes sustainable and to mitigate their negative effects, we must harmonize them with the larger natural processes. Nature does not resolve challenges with a single solution. We humans should learn to think more like Nature.
Good idea to store energy but think that " a moter use to lift take large amount of energy at time that can't be provided by renewable sources at a time "🙄🙄🙄
They have these things called lakes that have been around for millions of years that humans have been using to produce work. Pumping water from a lake at the bottom of a hill to one at the top of a hill when excess power is available and allowing it to run down hill producing power when there is a shortage is something that already exists.
There's no way drilling a hole that deep that wide will be cheap.
You don't have to, every nation on Earth is pitted with mineshafts.
But every mineshaft aren't straight holed km long...
Molten salt is another good source of energy storage...
*Molten salt + steam engine + mirrors and sun is a complete unit for free and green energy permanently. So free energy is around us but what if governments are culprits for increasing pollution and increasing health problems? Drugs (medicines) manufacturing is a billion dollars business. ..... This is root cause of all problems. .... Every elected political party pays 95% attention on the matter how to strengthen their party. This is root cause of all problems.*
Yes, but there are legal obstacles to overcome, not to mention that nuclear fusion and fission are incredibly expensive to set up.
The Molten Salt is a great idea, tie it to Thorium Reactors and it is very cheap by comparison to other means. Safer too by comparison to Uranium Thermo Nuclear. Great thing here is that these set-ups are closed loop, so nothing lost. Also Thorium is far easier to deal with when it comes to waste.
@@aaronmicalowe *Yeah, right.* 👍
@@BS-yy8urSome people want this. Some people want that. There is enough space in this universe for everyone to get exactly what they want :o)
There already is a system concept ignored. Is called energy to gas.
Implies concerting water in Hydrogen using excess solar/wind power, storing it to be used in the night time.
it is not ignored.. It s just another form of storing energy.. need to see the most cost effective and efficient.. Making hydrogen is still low efficient process for now, and trasforming it to electric energy with fuel cells or burn it is not so efficient, yet. Hope in the near future there will be improvements, and surely H can succed
So this is like a gravity light but on a massive scale. Interesting idea, I like it.
Just imagining all the energy wasted in heat, and mechanical stresses makes me question the efficiency
Vibycko, can you back up this claim? This does not seem to be a major issue with elevators, cars, trains etc. With proper oiling, ball-bearings etc one should be able to reduce friction. You can also lower the whole thing slowly to reduce friction.
Povel Vieregg Issue is, elevators aren't one or more kilometres tall, generally speaking. Doing maintenance on this type of shaft is way harder than, say, maintaining a dam which can hold more power.
@@nicholasharvey4393
> elevators aren't one or more kilometres tall, generally speaking. Doing maintenance on this type of shaft is way harder than
Now you are shifting the topic of discussion. I made no claims regarding maintenance. I pointed out that you can do this kind of thins without huge amount of friction and heath developing.
Mining shafts are already maintained all over the world. This is not a novel problem to deal with.
Dams have they own issues. If they break they cause massive destruction. A power storage system like this can fail without doing enormous environmental damage and drowning people.
But hey of course damns are preferable if that is an option. I am not questioning that. But not every area has access to dams.
Not a New Idea, Great Name Gravitricity. But well done.
This should be marketed to people who build underground bomb shelters. One of the biggest issues is that they need power deep underground and if they grid-tied their power all the time they'd be vulnerable in the event of an EMP. This mechanical solution could actually act as an intermediary between a grid and an underground shelter such that the electrical grid is not directly attached to the shelter oh, so the shelter is protected, but it's able to obtain power from the grid and maintain a vast store of energy in the event that the grid goes down.
I’ve long wondered if we can store and generate energy using a type of downhill mountain train system. Ideally water would be uploaded to tanks on train from nearby source (river or lake). Train continues with heavy load traveling many miles down hill at high speed, generating electricity with its turbines. At end of run, water is deposited back into River and lighter train is ran back up mountain with excess available peak electricity and tanks are refilled with water.
Pumped storage hydro- electric has very low energy density and this is equivalent to that.
Maybe so, but not every place has the water and the geographic height differences needed for pumped water storage. Shafts can be dug in more areas, in my opinion. As for efficiency, it may be relatively low but when one is dealing with "excess" energy storage from so-called renewable sources, one is probably still ahead of the game in terms of net energy amounts.
@@maintoc Shafts can not be dug anywhere because they are dependant on the stability of the surrounding soil. Skyscrapers can be easily constructed anywhere because the soil is not suited for foundations. Even if the shafts are created they might consume energy to pump water, as mineshafts do, if it is below the water table.
@@sadface7457 Agreed, but I didn't say "anywhere." I just meant more places are likely for those than natural (or human-made) sites for pumped-water energy storage.
The most important thing is to use the right storage form in the right place.
Same with renewable energy, every place has different possibilities.
@@maintoc Look up pumped hydro atlas. And once you transport the water their you only need to replace the evaporation losses.
Nuclear power plants create a lot of heat. At low peak this heat can be used to produce hydrogen with the same water used for spinning the turbine at high peak.
Hydrogen fuel is a much more powerful, flexible and efficient form of "stored energy."
That is vary interesting, but it doesn’t really have anything to do with this video. Thermochemical hydrogen will not be the only solution to grid storage. Nuclear energy will not be the only solution to grid power. Simply put, we are out of time to debate the pros and cons of each system, we must pursue every avenue at once.
The main benefit of gravitational potential energy storage, is that it is easily and cheaply scaled to massive sizes, and that the power can be stored indefinitely. By simply adding weight to the system, you can increase the capacity at practically no cost. By using abandoned mine shafts, the only real cost of construction is the generator and facilities. Hydrogen is good and all, but thermochemistry is expensive, and hydrogen fuel cells are expensive and inefficient.
As a Mechanical Engineer, your concept is interesting, but the question here for you is, what is your efficiency? From the first glance, your system is a Mechanical System, so the losses in your system are mostly due to friction. How are you minimizing friction?
I've been designing things with this concept for years, but I use a tower. And if you're harvesting energy macanicaly, I'd skip the electrical moder for a macanicaly driven weight, but still works for things like solar