1151 - Gravity Battery/Generator MK2 - It Works!
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
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There's a project called Gravitylight (2?)they make a gravity powered torch essentially for rural Kenyans far as I'm aware. They fill up a bag weighing 12kg I think with rocks, earth whatever and it powers the torch for 20 minutes so they don't have to have kerosene fumes or fire in the huts. 👍
Yes, there are YT videos showing demos. Would love to get my hands on one to see how much further it could be taken.
@@Coyot21 yeah, it feels like a grass root project with good intent, but I only remember what I heard out the back of my mind so.
I think they generated 100 mW from 12kg lifted about 6ft for 20 minutes. I could have it wrong with that maths but I think a tenth of a watt, enough to light some LEDs to see with. 👍
This is amazing information.
Can it do the reverse if you power it wilh solar panels, will it raise the rocks?. If so we could use that for street lights with our using chemicals on batteries its like an organic renewable energy. I was thinking of this for a while because rechargeable batteries dies.
@@ollieb9875 so its like the input is 59mwh and output of 33.3 mwh . If we can hack that to power for 8 hours at night we need 24 times the mass or height and lift the mass using solar, bye bye batteries
Placing the flywheel above the stairs gave me an idea:
What if you were to use the stairs only for going up, and then use the rope for going back down? Climbing the stairs is something you have to do anyway, but if you used the rope to lower yourself back down you could then capture energy that would otherwise be wasted and use it to turn the flywheel. This would eliminate the need for lugging heavy objects up the stairs every time the unit needed to be 're-charged' (a task which would likely require multiple trips), and also allow you to use steeper gearing for making the flywheel turn even faster, thereby storing more energy.
You would have to hit the ground without brakes, cause you would want the flywheel to keep turning ? 😂
@@rossmclauchlan8106 a capture (? like the one in grandfather clock) system would refrain weight from acceleration.... just the weight _weights_ a bit
Awesome stuff, guys! Luke, thanks for the close up of the meter. Now we all can hopefully make out of the readings!
Thank you mate! :)
Instead of the flywheel, you can gear it up and use an electric load (such as feeding any surplus output to a capacitor) to slow down the descent. Much more useful and convenient. With additional useful property that an initially empty capacitor will allow it to quickly gain the operating speed but then as it begins to fill up, it will naturally control overspeeding.
Up close video of the meter is appreciated.
Like a dry water wheel
I think I will do this more often! Thanks mate. :)
@@MyNameIsLukey :)
Perfect a model prototype and build a full scale machine powered by 400 (or more) gallons of water from a decent rain off my roof gutters. When it reaches the ground I have a captured water supply for my plants and garden...awaiting the next rain to repeat the cycle.
@Curtana White Thanks for the reality check Curtana :) My efforts would be better spent constructing a wind generator based on Rob's latest designs. Rain can be sparse at times here in Nebraska, the wind is always blowing. Thanks for your input my friend.
been a big fan for years, awesome vid, i live off grid in the Arizona desert, I'm working on a project very similar to this idea, except i use the weight dropping from thirty feet to keep a large pendulum swinging, which rotates a large flywheel and that powers a 10kw generator, still working
how much weight must you drop 30 ft to get 10kwh?
@@joshuanorris3109 I'm using 500lbs to keep a 25 ft pendulum swinging, the swinging motion spins a flywheel that runs the 12.5kw generator,
I reset the weight every 32 or so hours
@@kenbrown3223 wow thats awesome! would love to see a video of it in action! kudos to you for actually making the idea a reality.
Out of all of the gravity generators I've seen thus far your version sounds like the best one.
Great! I have wanted to see people play with this type of generator. Thank you. Keep up the great work xx
Perhaps you could try inserting a gear with a high ratio to slow the fall some more, allowing you to use a much heavier weight whilst stabilising output of the power generated?
I was going to mention this- it's how they designed the gravity lights they were shipping to africa. They had a runtime of about half an hour I think I recall, before they had to reset the weight, controlled by clever gearing. I think that concept in addition to the flywheel could get a decent amount of generation time before you had to reset the weight.
exactly,,if you live on a mountain,winch it up on solar and it can roll down the hill at night,,,legend.
I have an extension upon that same thing in my comment, if the weight was still sent back up on a pulley and the additional gears and flywheel applied, then adding a displacement operation under the weight could catch it and send it back up to reduce loss and cost...
Nice video. When I was first trying to think of a low tech way to store power for my off-grid property I remembered the cuckoo clock my parents had when I was a kid. It had two heavy weights on chains that you lifted up in the morning and it would power the clock all day. I just looked at the webpage for the gravity lights that someone mentioned and it looks VERY similar to the cuckoo clock idea. For my plan, I would either use a treadmill to lift a very heavy weight in the morning or to pump water to a height. Of course any other source of power, like solar, could be used, but I liked the treadmill idea to get some low impact cardio before I started the day. I will have to look into that site he mentioned in India.
The picture in picture works well! There was a story a few years ago about an invention making its rounds in Africa, it was a geared gravity generator hooked to a light. The idea was you wound it up and it would produce light for a certain amount of time
I recently read an article about a company (in Spain, I think) that is selling concrete "flywheels" for energy storage. The system is a 20 ton concrete cylinder and a permanent magnet motor-generator. The concept is to use the motor to spin-up the cylinder when electricity is cheap. Then generate power when it is expensive.
A M.E.S.S. Mass Energy Storage System. When they explode it is like a bomb going off.
@@MAGnetICus_Attractus Raises an important point.. The energy would disperse upon catastrophic failure. I just assumed whoever builds them took that into account.
@@hubrisnaut from what I have seen they put the large mass inside a vacuum chamber then use magnetic levitation to reduce friction. The mass spins at like 10,000+ rpm. If they structurally fail they go boom even when placed underground. I'll see if I can find where the one went boom.
i love your philosophy of build, test, improve……
We are building bicycle trailers to explore the Baja Outback….
Our first trailer i bicycled across America two years ago.
I find your videos to be most inspirational…..
You really are CHEERFUL FELLOWS ! It doesn't take very much to impress and be Happy....SERIOUSLY THANK YOU ,YOUR SCIENCE IS IMPRESSIVE.
So one watt, if I have the concept right. Might not seem like much but that is such a tiny weight and the height is minimal as well. Expand the concept to a ton lifted 20 feet up, neither of which is terribly difficult or expensive, and you really have some useful power saved up for a household scale application.
Not really, the thing is, this generator doesn't scale that well. The formula for potential energy is mass x height x gravitational constant. Meaning if i use your numbers it comes out to: 1000kg x 6m x 9.81m/s² = 58,9 kJ Converted to Wh: 16,35Wh. So one could power a 1W LED for 16h. Or a 1000W toaster for 59 seconds. So if you don‘t have a spare elevator shaft in your building, it isn‘t worth the hassle. Especially if you consider that the phone battery, you most likely have in your pocket, got more energy stored than the one ton setup. 3,7V x 5000mAh = 18.5Wh. And if you use supercaps, you get a similiar peak power performance as the gravity battery. If you ditch the weight and just use water that you pump up a mountain(pumped storage power plant), the concept of gravity batteries is still quite useful.
If i made a mistake calculating, let me know.
I always thought it’d be cool to have a generator gym where all of the weights have cables attached to harvest energy as they drop and the bicycle, elliptical, rowing machines etc. use generators for resistance instead of just a brake. At each machine or station there would be a meter displaying the power each person is generating as well as a large display that shows everyone’s combined energy output.
These generators wouldn’t be able to power an hvac system or anything but could probably keep the lights on, and I think it would help people get pumped up and motivated in their exercise as well
You invented the next "green heath club". People can exercise for FREE, and you can sell the excess energy they generate FOR PROFIT.
That's capitalism at its finest.
Now attach little buckets to the rope, chuck the machine on your roof and wait for the rain. Haha ofcourse you would have to stop the rain filling the opposing buckets and a way to auto empty the bottom bucket. Love the videos guys.
So, looking at this setup I see potential for a magazine style slide for the weights. Load up a row of weights with loops attached and use your fan-belt build (the toothed rubber belts) instead of rope to stabilize hooks along the outside side (like a conveyor belt with hooks). When a belt hook meets a weight loop, it grabs it from the magazine, the next weight slides in place and repeats as long as you keep feeding in weights with loops.
Maybe have a heavier weight every 2nd or 3rd and have the lower on a slow moving lazy-susan type affair so that the UP side of the rope pick one of the lighter weights and brings it back up. There will be losses due to friction all over but it could then continue for a longer period before needing to be "re-wound". Just a thought.
Love your work and glad to see the young lad following in your passion for invention.
I've been wrapping my brain over this gravity tower concept. It leaves so many questions like how much energy is needed to bring the weight back up? would it take more energy or less energy than it created. Their concept is great but only if you had an infinite amount of weights, which is the concept I'm trying to create and work out on paper.
Old school pendulum wall clocks have gravity batteries called weights too. You could spring load this contraption with the flywheel to get an even voltage output. Store energy by winding up a battery bank of springs with wind energy.
Awesome demonstration! Curious if you made it oscilate with weights on the ends of a rope, such that the flywheel brings the other weight up until it stops you would have the mechanical version of an electric oscillator. Friction would eventually stop it... the flywheel represents the inductor because it resists change, and the weights represent the capacitor because they cause the change in direction of the rope, which represents the current. Remember the 0 point is where the weights rest at the same level. Pulling one up makes the other go down. This is important in that the midpoint is halfway down the stairs.
Clocks come to mind, nice work & great channel content
Awesome! 👏👏👏
You can also put a small weight on the rising side of the rope, detach downstairs the weight Luke put and use the counter rotation for something else, might be useful.
I love the design of the japanese shishi odoshi fountain that uses this shifting weights.
Bravo. Well done. I am drilling a deep hole in the living room now to make mine work. Love it.
You better ask the Mrs. permission
@@OKFrax-ys2op Lol. She will be so excited to see what I have started.
@@ArcanusLibero Maybe she’ll hand you the shovel?
@@OKFrax-ys2op One would hope. You are supposed to support your spouse in important ventures.
Agreed. With little input resources you can make something really work well.
Trial and error engineering. Design, build, refine. I could see this going places.
Good deal! Now you guys need to play with the gear ratio and add more weight. Weight goes down slower and flywheel speed should increase simply by changing the gear ratio a bit. Adding a jackshaft should do the trick.
Air barrings would be cool but then one would need magnetic couplings, and to have at least 60psi per area of contact space.the tolerances are tight. I would be cool to have the means for magnetic or air barrings. It would be really nice on a bike
ROBERT!!.. AREN'T YOU LUCKY TO HAVE A GUY LIKE LUKE WHO'S JUST AS INTERESTED IN THE STUFF YEE DO IN THE SHOP.??. BOTH OF YOUR JOY IS SOOO! INFECTIOUS I THINK IT COULD BE A CURE FOR "COVID" ; )
I you could find a way to make the weight bounce back up again at the end, instead of coming to a jarring halt, you could get a few more tugs on the flywheel. I suggest a knot in the rope at the top end that gets caught (once unwound) on some sort of ratcheted level connected somehow to the flywheel.
Aha... I've made my way through the whole "Motors and Generators" playlist... phew - learning I am, that's for sure! What have I learned so far? Mostly, not to be afraid of trying stuff!
As a mechanical type - you know, the bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer - I've always been wary of AC... now, I'm a little less wary, that's for sure!
That washing machine motor in the shed... beware... I'm coming! 👍⚡🤣
The missus says"stop giving me mad ideas" lol very interesting mate.👍
I like the idea of a home gym where every machine pulls weights up on a small scale gravity generator. I could see a concept being a mess of gears, cables and pulleys
This feels like preschool. I really hope you advance in our studies of alternative energy science. 1:3,6,9. +3+3-3=3
Hi Robert
Great, I love it. Please continue evolving this concept. I would also like to see some calculations in your next video.
If you poured water from a large container into buckets on a conveyer rope that spill out at the bottom while another at the top fills you could then pump from the bottom with a wind mill to help keep the top reservoir full with a centrifical governor adjusting the flow of the water according to power demand
There are companies like Energy Vault and Gravitricity that sell this system at great scale as a mechanical battery for the grid.
Yeah but energy vaults design freaking suck.
Thats what I call this technology also. Flywheel is an interesting addition! I was thinking maybe grandfather clock type mechanism?
Awesome, MK2 is the way to go!!!
gears, more weight, and a speed governer
The flywheel buffers (without chemical batteries, a good thing) energy delivery from the weight to the generator. That's a necessity for a battery-less system because the end of each weight drop stops energy delivery .. unless the system has more than one weight drop machine to accomplish continuous (staggered) drops "and* each weight reset time is shorter than the sum of the drop times of the next-in-line drop machines.
Add a basket of bowling balls at the top, and set it up with hooks and gates for continuous dropping, like one of those ball track toys but in reverse.
Like to see how you could use a bungie cord with that setup, basic idea would be the fly wheel maintains the momentum but you would be able to get more energy out per bounce.
An offshore abandoned drilling platform would be a good site to construct a gravity generator. These platforms have a tall rig tower and being a semi-submerged floating platforms they can be moved to any depth of ocean needed. The electric motors are very powerful and can lift many tons of weight…
Great idea 👍 so many cool way's to make a gravity battery. I thought of a massive weight in a tall building that is slowly cranked up with solar and wind energy.
Then slowly falling to recover energy. Som clock's work like this
I imagine you could harvest power from the weight of rain water. The gutter fills a tank the tank drops. A very small hole in the tank could allow it to empty over time. A counterweight bringing the tank up again for the next time it rains. Then energy is harvested from the counter weight.
I see a conveyor belt with horizontal poles on it on the road side of a steep hill. At the end of each pole sticking out into the road is a cushion. Cars wishing to traverse the hill have to engage the cushion thus taking the pole down hill, turning the attached conveyor, turning your flywheel. Save on break pads to.
Water. A container at the top and one at the bottom. Fill the top container which will pull the bottom (empty)container up. I would put 3 or more containers on it.
Gearing the weight and using a clockwork escapement can control descent speed, and paired with a high efficiency three phase generator could provide power for a household. 👍
You could use water and floats to lift the weights back up.
I saw this and other simple machines like the pendulum and flywheel. But I haven't seen the all put together in machine. Using the pendulum to control the weight and the weight to run the flywheel geared like a clock so that it can run some amount of time. Just a thought . I've been looking around but all I've found is a free fall weight or some manually pushing a pendulum or turning a flywheel.
I been watching these UA-cam videos on drilling wells by using water pressure and PVC pipes glued together as these get deeper. The deepest one was around fifty feet. If you made complete system were you used solar panels to provide energy to lift the dead weights, I wonder how many fifty foot well holes it take to keep the flywheel running 24 hours a day.
dont dig holes,,put them on hills,,or the sea.
@@dizzywilliams3557 Another option would be already existing shafts. Areas that have abandoned mine shafts could easily be made into grav battery
Abandoned quarry on hill is ideal place as it will very limited resources
you could use flowing water and series of buckets for the weight
Have a look at how the flywheel, worm screw, gears & weight where arranged in an 18th century weight driven spit roasting jack. It should help you to build a more compact & efficient machine
The cement flywheel is a great idea.
Awesom gravity generator! -- 1 watt at moment... Can i suggest to use one or more Hoverboard Wheel motor as generator? . I think it can be 100+ times more efficient in this case. Really nice project . Very intersting the concrete flywheel too.
Cool video! The concept got me wondering, how about using a series of water tanks that are fed by a gravity water pump? One very large tank as a reservoir can feed multiple tanks in series. As one tank fills up, it reaches a certain weight and triggers a release. Once the tank is released, it adds its weight to the flywheel system. Once the tank reaches the bottom it is emptied which allows the tank to be pulled up to the top again, at which point the gravity pump will once again start filling the now empty tank. You can check by the amount of time it takes to run down the flywheel, and the time it takes to gravity feed the individual tanks in the system to calculate the number of tanks needed. The water would be in a closed loop, circulating from the large reservoir tank over to the series of gravity tanks. You could obtain perpetual free energy that is a kind of cross between gravity and hydroelectrically powered.
You must identify how much power you want to produce and thus how many times to refill the tank and how much water you will consume. But water is not so dense as a weight, so you must use lots of it, or drop it many times per hour, or build many more towers to operate simultaneously. If your weight resetting depends on solar+batteries, you don't have a truly green (sustainable) system. A small amount of intermittent human power might be the answer.
You also must know the decay rate of your flywheel given its connection to your generator.
If you were to use a huygens mechanism, you could use an absolutely massive weight, then use a bicycle geared down significantly to ratchet the weight up
Just what I was looking for. I can use this...
Seriously interesting stuff. I'm thinking multi gym/gravity generator in the basement. Or even a gym where you get paid to work out.
If you think about it, storing energy in a spring is similar.
You could use a ram pump to pump water from as stagnant source such as a lake or the ocean into a bucket at the top. Then have a mechanism to release the bucket at a certain weight. Then just repeat that process. Very cool.
You pump too a storage tank then run through a turbine or old-school water wheel to get the energy back.
Same principle just different method
I like the idea of multiple weights at intervals. Maybe need to get a better generator but my guess is your using what you have on hand. You could also combine this with the magnet coil experiment you did with the same flywheel.
Oh no.. there are perpetual motion peeps down there !
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V
if make flywheel real big so it can handle like 90kg then got your self a elevator down :)
My version of the gravity generator is very different. I propose two 1000 gallon tanks of water, each at different elevation to spil onto a paddle wheel for creating electrical energy. Then return the water to the top tank by way of using a gasoline trash pump.
I've yet to put my plan into action, mainly due to cost. In the long run, I will certainly recover the investment, and enjoy many more years of service compared to buying expensive batteries.
Forgive me, I'm not thinking well at the moment (I'm fine, car accident Monday, a little foggy) - If there could be a way to create a "perpetual energy" type machine incorporating the momentum of the concrete flywheel, and 2 weights and gravity and the spinning of the 'generator' all at the same time - So that as one weight is pulled down by gravity, the other one is pulled up, and at the end of the "reach", to swap the "weight pully" direction while keeping the flywheel spinning the same way, so that 1 drop of "a weight" turns into 100 drops of "a weight" - to lengthen the time the contraption could spin without resetting or outside assistance.
"there could be a way to create a perpetual energy type machine"
There isn't.
That's cool ,well done 👍👍
Can u try elastic three phase storage?
It consists of using three different sets of elastic bands to increase output consistency.
Load a giant spring with hydrolic leveredge (jack+spring replaces the shaft/gravity) and usage of heavier gears should be able to get that generator pushing some real force. Force you can use for stuff under longer periods. It would be lighter to, be built into smaller units.
Mk2 as loads more potential but comes with more risks and with concrete contraptions hanging aloft as an HSO I think you both need to up your health and safety at work!! That said guys, I can recommend the Colin furze safety tie 👍🏻
very good job and clever combining of 2 technology
Makes me think of alonger shaft with a bell ringing mechanism?thank you both .🌠🌹💗
Olds elevator with vertical wind fan to turn tube on olds elevator ,lifting the sand to a certain weight to vessel would release and drop empty discharge sand at bottom to be re-uptake sand by olds elevator tube .when wind is high to refill second vessel that has come up as the other dropped down using your vertical blade model to turn tube not killing birds ...
Hi mate ! I think about using water weight, because i have a source. It could also work with rain water...
yes it could and that is an awesome idea - I love it mate!
Use the freewheel crank for raising. Put the generator and flywheel on the ground. Get a better generator.
Or better yet crank it to the top while spinning up the flywheel then when it falls it will again, drive the flywheel. Power up and down.
Imagine an apartment complex where a few of these are installed on the top floors. Every time anyone wants to workout all they will have to do is carry a load up the stairs to the top floor. The generator then produces power when the load comes down and it is stored. I am sure you could atleast offset lighting requirements for all the apartments with this type of a setup.
You could move your lounge room to the top of the stairs. Every morning collect the weights from the bottom with a wheel barrow. At night as you sit in your chair you could feed the weights on one by one, to run a small lamp so that you can see what you’re doing 😂
if you increase the load on the motor does it slow down the fall?
Hmmm.
What if a bicyclist stands alternately on each pedal (weight dropping) to make the bike move forward. Gears don’t increase energy or efficiency - only the time needed to convert that energy into motion.
No need for a flywheel since momentum = mass (bike and body) x velocity (same as a flywheel does). If there were no bike and body mass, the bike would stop immediately, instead of coasting, as soon as the pedaling stopped.
Momentum can be increased with relatively small rhythmic energy inputs (as when pushing someone on a swing) but remember the law of physics which says: energy put into any mechanism is equal to the available output energy minus friction (heat).
Or another example: pumped hydro does not “make” energy but stores it (similar to a battery) since the energy “gained“ by gravity during release is equal to the energy required to move the water and overcome gravity when pumping it up - minus the friction of the pump and piping going up plus the piping and generator when the water is coming down.
Friction - The reason ICE cars turn only about 30% of gasoline’s energy into motion. The reason there is no such thing as “free” energy or perpetual motion.
Fun and also well done. Great work guys.
I know if anyone could make that perpetual it would be you.... Great video thanks.
Water wheel was invented a long time ago , maybe one of the first gravity generators
Would be interedting to see if you could use a bit bigger weight to up the amps and watts a little more, love the idea of multiple hooks, maybe do like a coocoo clock with a small weight on other side to bring back hook to the top to rest the system
Now scale this up to where the weights are the size of apartment buildings and the gearing ratio is changed to 1000 to 1 and you've got commercially viable quantities of stored electric energy. And the weights can be something as simple as a tin box full of dirt. Nothing complex, just make them extremely large. No need to build a tower if you've got a hill where you could put a track for the weight to run on. There are also abandoned mines where deep shafts could be used for placing the weights. Many of those mines are out in the desert areas of the West where all the sunshine is anyway, making a perfect marriage between solar power, and mechanical storage for when the sun isn't shining. We just need this on an industrial sized scale. It could be done without too much investment, and using already existing technology, most of which has been around for centuries.
Nice and simple experience by the way! What about enlarging the driving wheel (wheel that is driven by the weight)? If the the driving wheel is just as large as the driven wheel, the ratio would equal. It would nice to see some number, just for the eck of it !
Applied to a geared gravity battery in an mine shaft the flywheel would be really something
Great video guys thanks .what about something like the accumulaters ( I think that's what there called ) in Tower Bridge?
Is there any way to slow down the falling weight. maybe by adding a tensioner or more gears so it can last longer?????
To power my house through the night i calculate that a weight of 500 tons needs to be lifted 20 meters . Perhaps the gizmo can be combined with a deep , wide water or sanitation well where rocks are available nearby but not in a city for sure 😅
The question is how we can keep it running is there a way to make the load just constantly getting back up and go down by itself?
Love the channel! Might I suggest using a standard load (1000 ohms perhaps) so you can get power generated while just measuring voltage?
What about Mel's Hole in Ellensburg, Washington? Setup the generator at Mel's hole. Then throw the weight down the hole and generate electricity for 80,000 feet. Now, all we need is a really long rope.
this with a something like coo coo clock. drops a little give some spin, drops some more, more spin. may be change the gear ratio so you get more spin.
Beautiful video! Thanks a lot.
I will give you and all the inventors here a link and start at 28.55.
For me it is to difficult mechan8c and fir you it will be maybe the AHA to make real free energy for whole mankind and earth. Keep it ethic and cheap please.
Wish you all the best. ♥️🧙♀️🌻🍀
Cool! What about trying something with a see-saw or even a swing set!. Putting a generator in the middle?
I bet you guys could generate 2V ;)
Thank you for the inspiration
Was that meter your programmable load device?
Hey Robert, I know this isn't really your field, but with Yellow Stone in the news as of late I was wonder if you could make a few videos on it> I'm requesting the how to in making a thermal acoustic cooler. find a means of 200hz, put a thermal collector in the middle of a long tube, that kind of thing. Yesterday it was 112 here in WA state. I'd greatly appreciate it, thank you.
Total Available energy in joules is mass * 9.81 * height in SI units (kg and Metre)
you peaked at about 1w (a joule per sec)
It would be interesting to put a Data acquisition device on the circuit which you could use to calculate your efficiency. Graph I * V over time until the flywheel stops, the area under the curve would be the total amount of joules generated
Next you should add more gears to the set-up, that way you can slow the decent of the weight and at the same time spin the flywheel much faster
Awesome. Wow, this is awesome!!
what about the principle of clock pendant..that use gravity to turn the clock..can we use that for generator?
What is When you make the wight on the Kette, and this go up and around Again?