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Gravity storage.
A concrete block ( cheap ) can drive an electric generator as it falls/creaps downward. Make an energy storage system that lifts the block upward and locks the block into position when energy is not being used. When the facility demands energy, unlock the position holder and the giant
weight creaps down, driving a crank generator. I mean i could picture a million ways a falling block on a vertically aligned conveyor belt could pull down on a bunch of cranks.
in fact, this probably already exists although i havn't found it in any search on the internet.
there is 'gravity car' on half baked which is pretty funny.
SO why wouldn't this work!? the problem is not why...it's how. I think the difficulty is in the space and weight needed per person. this really requires a lot of both i think, since gravity is not really an effective storage device given our energy needs and current technology. however, even if it is inefficient, i think the point is saving a lot of waste energy through energy lost in transmission....and also, this would have ZERO emissions. it's also extremely simple! it wouldn't break.
I did a lot of calculations with which i won't bore you with , but if you are interested check out this link.
www.columbia.edu/~zk30/gravity.html
ultimately, i'm convinced that if you could produce a
1) 100 ton per cubic meter block ( pure depleted uranium---one of the densist materials in existence would come in a meter block at about 18 to 20 tons) and
2) the support system to make sure it didn't fall through the ground,
it would certainly sink in alot.
3) as well as the machinery to hoist and juice it ( that is , to get the energy out) ,
then i think every house in the world could have it's own energy generator/storage system that fit neatly in the corner of the yard.
at that point, all you would need is an energy production system located at your house to hoist the block up. and or b) the proverbial milk man to come around with his special machinery and hoist your block for you.
zeev kirsh
"I made a gravity powered generator last summer."
http://www.sciencef...wthread.php?t=18462
About three pages in. Note comparison of gravity and electromagnetic force (gravity loses.) [jutta, Apr 10 2006]
(?) Halfbaked (pretty much)
Counterbalance_20City
bigsleep's idea. [dbmag9, Apr 10 2006]
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If you replace the block of
concrete with water pumped
around in a disused coalmine,
your idea is baked AFAIK. |
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Or float a big blob of uranium up the top of the Hoover Dam to give it a power boost ;) |
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Um, we are all agreed that more energy is required to lift the block than what can be extracted out of its decent, right? |
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Yeah, but less is wasted than would be if you stored it in, say, a battery. |
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The hard part is the last paragraph - moving it around. If the energy travels as electricity, you're suffering the same losses as now. But it could travel as "height". At a dam (a widely used water-based communal gravity generator!), very heavy things would be lifted onto big cherrypickers. The "milkman" would then drive those cherrypickers to towers in people's yards and slide the weights onto the towers where they'd fuel local generators. |
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I haven't actually done the math, but I think a vehicle carrying the average American's energy supply for one day might be so heavy that we don't have a good way of moving it around. |
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(To solve *that* problem, supply half the people in the town with an equal, but opposite system based on gigantic helium balloons in which the "weight" is actually buoyancy! As long as the "milkman" carries corresponding numbers of superheavy weights on towers and superlight balloons really close to the ground, the vehicle can move freely. If there's no wind.) |
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Before electricity, there were relatively local gravity-based generators that were used by small groups of people to extract work - water mills. So, maybe the most practical way of realizing this would be for everybody to move onto an incline, and be connected by a series of channels, into which small wheels dip. |
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//if you could produce a ...100 ton per cubic meter block //
Use a depleted black hole. |
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Of course, water is only 1 ton per cubic metre, but it is cheap and easily found. |
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IM really glad i've had so much feed back in so little time. thank you guys for helping me think about this. |
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I think the two clear things in energy storage (and production) are clear |
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1) that we need more smaller distributed cluster systems and less larger giant coal/feul/giant hydro burning plants. the more distributed and smaller our production/storage facilities are the better for all of us.
---if it's closer, than transmission loss and disruption risk are minimized. |
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2) that for energy storage , the less complex a system is, the less chemicals , the less moving parts the less maintanance it needs, the less susepticle to deteriaration and disruption the storage system is, the safer and cheaper it is. |
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and i think the problem with any water source is that we don't want to mess with contaminating and increasingly prescious resource. we need too much water for it's potential energy ( gravity density) to produce enough energy. as for helium, i don't really think it's bouyant enough to produce lots of energy. you would need too much. |
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I think the way to approach our energy problems is to realize that there will be MANY forms of producing energy that are local and dependent on many factors. BUT...at any given time there probably is a way of storing energy that is superior to other forms. there's got to be a holy grail of energy storage i thnk. |
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Also...has anyone ever considered storing energy in hot plasma confined in a tokomac. i Mean, long before we get fusion, the fusion people will , or already have, figured out the difficult problem of confinement and if they are going to extract energy from a hot plasma, the extraction method/techonology may well be useful before the plasma is advanced enough to produce a commercial energy supply. We pump energy into the plasma , and then get it out. How efficiently can a tokomac bottle energy? |
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Not particularly. The energy required to steer the plasma round, and round, and round is massive. It's getting a tokamak to produce more energy than it uses that is the difficult bit. |
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The benefits of large power plants is efficiency of generation - a big diesel is thermodynamically much more efficient than a little one for a number of reasons. Distribution losses are of course a significant drawback. |
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Assuming four people per house, you're going to need 150 billion tonnes of supermetal to achieve what you're suggesting on the scale you're suggesting. I agree that gravity storage is a good thing as it can be made simple, cheap and reliable. I don't recommend using any advanced materials in it though; all systems have a finite life during which they must produce (ie prevent the waste of) more energy than was required to build them if they are to be worthwhile. The energy that is put into processing DU, for example, would be prohibitive. |
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If you don't want to use water, a big bucket of rocks and earth would be a good way to go instead. I don't know, grow some vegetables in it at the same time or something. |
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[edit] I've looked at your calculations, and I think you're missing a trick. What you really want to do is lift your house up and down... |
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More seriously though, don't try to store enough energy for three days. Rather than having a "milkman" hoist up the block, have him bring hydrogen or oil for a generator, run the generator continuously at one power setting, and raise or lower the block to compensate for peaks or troughs in demand. That way you only need to store, perhaps, an hour's energy. Otherwise, your milkman is going to need to cart around a power plant big enough to supply the whole neighbourhood, and you can't tell me that bringing the neighbourhood powerplant to your door is better than transmission losses. |
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//And on top of the weight you have solar panels below transparent windmills......// |
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Zimmy zimmy... The windmill vanes are supposed to be made out of the solar panels, same as everything else. |
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Except for the size, this is how a pendulum clock works. |
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sorry, [ye_river_xiv]. I deleted my ealier comment. |
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I know this is an older thread, but I really think the lifting of the house is the way to go. Basically, lift it using solar power (which would require different gear ratios) then lowering would provide electricity for the home. |
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Each home would act as its own battery. Huge skyscrapers would work the same way. Rising from the solar power generated and releasing energy at night or when solar power is not available. |
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The calculation link was no longer available. How much weight for how long would it take to generate enough electricity for an average home for a few hours in the evening? |
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/Acceleration is 9 odd meters per second, mass increses with the square of speed/ |
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First post, I hope this is OK. |
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I don't know where I was, it might of been England 20 years ago, and I was at some king of a mill somewhere, and there was a room where there was a huge concrete block which they used to store excess energy. As I recall there was a system of pulleys. The main use of the energy as I recall was to saw or drill wood or something like that. It didn't get run through a battery, it was just direct transfer of the vertical energy into a sawing motion. Really fascinating. |
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I am interested in the idea of running a cable across a small river or large creek, and putting some kind of a paddle wheel on the cable with a shaft taking the power back to a cottage. |
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