The Left is doing it wrong.
We need to stop calling it the green New Deal; and call it the Patriot Power Act.
We’re not trying to go green or “Woke”. No! We’re making ’Merca energy independent! We’ll stop importing oil from the tourist countries! And be energy self sufficient!
—BRANDING!!
I just heard about gravity “batteries” that involve lifting concrete blocks to store potential energy, then dropping them to generate electricity with a turbine. It’s probably the most interesting thing I’ve heard of in a while and such a clever way to store energy without needing a battery.
The math doesn’t really work out for gravity batteries. A fifteen ton block dropping 100 feet releases about a kwh of energy.
Or you could just have $150 worth of lithium batteries.
How much energy is released is not as important as the ratio of how much it takes to lift vs. lower (AKA “efficiency”)
This. Thanks for doing the math. The only way it makes any real sense is if you a have geographical features that can store the energy. Ie right near a mountain and a large body of water high up. And even with that, it often only makes economical sense at exsisting dams where you can pump the water back into the reservoir and the generation systems is already paid for and in place.
See I’ve been skeptical about the gravity battery, too. I’m glad to see it developed, toyed with, but I like very simple ideas with very few, if any, moving parts. Gravity battery? Moving parts, cables. Would be a nightmare to work on if it broke down, possibly dangerous with the stored potential energy.
Much safer: sand battery. BTUs are expensive, you’re probably heating your water, and depending on the winter climate where you live, you are using electricity to convert to BTUs so you can heat your home/not die. I say skip the middle man!! Convert the extra energy generated from solar/wind/whatever…store it in the fucking sand as heat.
I also look at the sand battery’s simplicity, serviceability from a post-nuke/EMP/grid-down/post-apocalyptic standpoint. Should I be unfortunate enough to survive. It’s so…practical. Solar panels should only get hit <15% damage from EMP. It gets the electricity. Sent to large copper rods, acting as heating elements. Heat the sand. 🙌🏻 Sand will cost a few thousand & never degrade. Rods, cheap enough, have some spares. Those shitty LiPO batteries play out during the apocalypse, as they literally always do? You’re SOL.
first, it stores heat only. you can make it work with 1000L or so barrel of water and this gets you supply for days. second, you’d want this thing to service entire small community, because otherwise square-cube law fucks you hard. you need also all the auxiliary devices like heaters, pumps, control hardware that looks the same no matter if you make it work for your house or small village
Yes. And it works.
It’s called a Dam.
The catch is we spend 0 energy on the upstream water.
Timberborn has those, it’s a city builder game with beavers.
there are plenty issues with wear of all moving parts involved. fortunately it can be improved on in a pretty straightforward way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGGOjD_OtAM
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Energy storage is THE issue…. You want to be a billionaire? Figure that out.
Pumped hydro, is great, but there are very few places where it is feasible
there are many nifty ways to do it. i like molten silicon for example https://silbat.com
but how about shift in perspective? if you want to get in on all renewable power source, maybe it’s you who should adjust power consumption a little bit instead? fortunately most of energy used is used up for heating, and you can plug all excess energy into heater, store energy in big barrel of water for all your heating needs, and skim electrical power when available + maybe batteries as a higher priority
What makes you think they haven’t already?
in some places energy for individual customer is cheaper at night, but the real deal is with large industrial power consumers, like arc furnaces or aluminum smelting plants. these things have special arrangements that allow grid operator to regulate some % of power in return for cheaper energy, either by remote control or on schedule. in principle the same thing could work for thousands to millions of water heaters, making it work like a large, one way “battery” soaking up peaks in energy production