A California startup is repurposing trains and rail cars to help renewable energy utilities compete with fossil fuels.
August 21, 2017
6:45 AM EDT
What goes up must come down. This principle applies to most things in our current gravitational setup — college tuition being a conspicuous exception — and it could provide a significant boost to green energy initiatives, too.
A California-based company called Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) is using the power of gravity to help renewable energy utilities compete with coal and gas. The idea is to help solve the perennial problem of energy storage. Because wind and solar installations can’t always generate energy on demand — sometimes it’s cloudy and the air is still — green utilities need a reliable method of storing surplus energy.
There are several ways to do this using high-tech industrial batteries, flywheels, or hydroelectric facilities, but these approaches tend to be expensive and complicated.
ARES’s solution? Run some old trains up and down a hill.
The company harnesses the power of potential and kinetic energy to help utilities add and subtract to the energy grid as needed. When the wind or solar farm is producing excess energy, that power is shuttled over to the adjacent ARES facility. The surplus energy is used to power repurposed electric locomotives, which in turn haul enormously heavy railroad cars to the top of a hill.
When less energy is being produced but more is needed for the grid, the railroad cars roll back down, turning potential energy back into kinetic energy by powering onboard generators with the force of their descent. The technique is similar to the regenerative braking system that is used in electric and hybrid vehicles, which routes deceleration energy to the vehicle’s battery.
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The system is also similar to existing hydroelectric (“pumped hydro”) solutions that essentially do the same things with water — pumping water uphill and capturing downhill flow. A benefit of the rail energy storage solution is that it doesn’t need to be near a large source of water. That’s good for wind and solar installations, which are often located in remote areas.
It’s cheaper, too. Ares contends that its rail energy solution costs about half as much as competing energy storage solutions, and has less of an environmental impact.
ARES
“We use no water, burn no fossil fuel, produce no emissions, and use no hazardous or environmentally troubling materials like lithium,” ARES CEO James Kelly told Seeker. “We are excited to be a green storage solution that can enable higher penetration of intermittent renewable resources — like wind and solar — in the US and around the world.”
Pushing rocks up a hill might seem like a curiously low-tech approach to energy storage, but Kelly said that this very simplicity is what gives rail energy storage an edge. Building a railroad loop is a lot simpler than maintaining a giant battery farm, and the ARES system can easily use repurposed locomotives and freight cars. An ARES site can be quickly and cleanly decommissioned and restored in months rather than years or decades, Kelly said.
None of this matters unless the system is efficient. Rail energy storage has about an 80 percent efficiency rate, meaning that the descending railroad cars can output 80 percent of the energy that was initially used to get them up that hill.
That’s better than pumped-storage hydroelectricity, Kelly noted, which typically runs in the 60 percent range. Batteries can return a higher efficiency, but their capacity degrades over time.
“The real question is how much you get out when you need the energy,” Kelly said. “If you discharge your storage batteries tomorrow, you will probably get 90 units out. If you discharge in six months, you may get 40 or 50 units. ARES units have essentially infinite cycles with no degradation.”
“What we’ve done with ARES is harness the inexhaustible, entirely reliable power of gravity,” he added.
HT/Rod Everson
These model prove it will work.
http://media5.picsearch.com/is?gGFfDsRdTZ7YlLyeIwgzn8WFxAaGt-Qe_1Wzg5uhAlA&height=236
Oops
Come on, folks. It’s a California company, making it certain the Brown Government will give it a some seed money. Say, a few mil.
Interesting idea, but wheels on track, wheels turning axles, turning a rotor, “copper losses”, “iron losses” (field magnet losses) electrical connections, pushing air,… 80% energy recovery is a pipe dream, maybe 65%. Sounds like a physicist’s calculation.
Agreed. I noticed also that they talked about downhill efficiency, but not uphill, which is when you would get major heat loss.
Why not just build the dang thing vertically and reduce the land used? You could put one inside each windmill tower – a 50 tonne weight that gets wound up to the top when its blowy and released when it isn’t. For a 50m tower that would store enough energy to power a typical house for a couple of hours… OK, it’s a bad idea.
Apparently, a photoshopped solution, integrated on the ‘brouchure level’.
I swear I read a science fiction story where orbital launches were made from an equatorial mountain based electromagnetic rail launcher power by hundreds of trains that were sent up hill one by one [to store up energy] and then all rolled down at once to power the launcher. It was written in the 50’s.
Asimov
Fountains of Paradise
Diamond cable i think
RS
Ah, no, that is the “Elevator” thing,
Sorry,
RS
Our current grid supplies energy at a constant rate, variable as needed. No need to store it.
Wind and solar can’t do that.
To store energy, cost energy.
Storing energy to supply a grid when the wind don’t blow or the sun shine?
Less subsidies (for all) or regulations selectively applied against what works, how can wind/solar/bio-fuel compete with fossil/hydro/nuclear?
Except for the CAGW hype, such would would be reduced to “infomercials”.
“Why pay the electric bill to recharge your smart phone, notebook or laptop? For just $19.99 you can have you’re very own FREE energy source! And if you buy now….”
Wind and solar have a place in supplying power for everyday, non-critical situations (recharging combat devices would be an example of critical situations), but a hospital? An airport? A water plant?
(Remind me never to have a heart attack on an airplane when I’m thirsty.
“has less of an environmental impact.” So building a rail system doesn’t tear up a bunch of ground and permanently alter the environment? Besides it isn’t very attractive. Just how many MW capacity can be developed by this method. Interesting idea. Not sure it is all that viable.
All things considered, This seems to be a pretty elaborate scheme to store a relatively modest amount of energy. Is this really the best use of resources and real estate?
Ok, this seems reasonable until one considers maintenance. They may be on steel rails with steel wheels and tyres (Yes, trains have tyres. Unless the wheel/tyre is of a solid type), but they do wear. How much energy is needed to replace a steel tyre on a steel wheel? Are the tyres heated and then cooled to fit the wheel, or is the wheel cooled to fit the tyre, or both. Each wheel/tyre combination weighs tonnes, that’s tonnes of steel. Where does that steel come from, how much energy used. It seems pie-in-the-sky stuff when one looks at how rail systems are built.
Every windmill should have ‘Cuckoo Clock Weights’, say rings around the tower. Wind blow – they wind up.
Drop when needed and turn the same generator. Just hope they don’t fall over.
Do I need a /sarc tag?
Ah, it’s a startup. So CA taxpayers, via Gov.Brown, will fund this boondoggle to the tune of millions. The CEO and all senior staff will buy Tesla cars and then fold after a few years and fade away to live a comfortable life, maybe in another state or country.
In another state with lower taxes and energy costs due to the lack of boondoggle funding, so their boondoggle money will stretch further.
“maybe in another state or country.”
Preferably one without an extradition treaty.
You don’t need to wait for excess solar or wind generation to provide this storage. Just get a couple of diesel engines and tow the cars to the top, then release them. Then tow them back up and release them again. Keep up the process and you won’t have to worry about cloudy or wind-less days. Or even about installing wind turbines or solar installations at all. It will work even better if you fill them with oil at the top and deliver the oil to a refinery at the bottom. Less weight going up, more weight coming down. This makes more sense than the rail energy system described in the article, so I’m undecided about a /sarc tag.
Why use diesel? There are plenty of old steam engines that can burn coal that is very cheap these days. Or if you want sustainable, use wood! They can work all night, and when it’s not windy. And steam engines are quite heavy.
The linked article at Seeker says 50 MW. Not too shabby…same as a GE Frame 6 gas turbine.
This might be one of the better and simpler storage ideas to come along lately.
We’ll know soon when the Nevada system is finished.
I’m not seeing the numbers. Please check my math. From the company website (linked below):
one Watt-hr = 2655 ft pounds
claimed storage = 20 GWh = 20E+9 Wh
claimed storage foot lbs = 20E+9 Whr * 2655 ft-pounds/Wh = 5.3E+13 ft-lbs
typical railroad car weight =2.63E+5 pounds
claimed storage in “foot-cars” (one loaded car descending one foot) = 5.3E+13 ft-lbs / 2.63E+5 lbs/car = 2e+8 foot cars.
Now, a loaded train will climb a maximum grade of around 2% in all-weather conditions. Suppose we have a mile of track. It will drop about a hundred feet.
On this track (or multiple parallel tracks as envisioned by the company), we’d need a total of 2E+8 foot-cars / 100 feet = 2 million railcars …
What am I missing here?
w.
They claim a track grade of 7.5% in their press kit:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/siteninja/multitenant/assets/21125/files/original/All_About_ARES_-_070616.pdf
And they claim their patented technology can run at up to 25%. Even then that’s a lot of cars. Their press kit says:
140 4-car shuttle units
• 11,400 concrete weights weighing 234 tons each
“davidmhoffer August 23, 2017 at 9:59 pm
• 11,400 concrete weights weighing 234 tons each”
They also claim no emissions (Of CO2 I presume). 11,400 slabs of concrete 234 tons each. How much CO2?It seems these “green” planet saving boondoggles can’t work without CO2 emissions.
This one has been managing 3.5% for over 135 years but it needs someone sitting on the front of the engine with a box of sand to sprinkle on the rails. Quite challenging weather conditions too sometines.
http://www.irfca.org/steam/dhr1.html
Some emissions too although probably less than an EV powered by Drax burning US forests.
This project is a gravitylight on steroids:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting-for-developing-countries#/
I’m trying to understand how much electricity they can store versus capex. Their site says:
Estimated capital costs $1,350kW / $168/kw-hr
I’ve no idea what that means. Anyone?
Let’s do a back-of-the-envelope calculation (BOTEC). According to D P Laurable’s comment (August 23, 2017 at 6:31 pm), the company’s, Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES), web site claims a storage capacity of 16-24 GWh (gigawatt-hours). For the BOTEC, I’ll use 20 GWh. A Wh (Watt-hour) is equivalent to 3,600 joules, so 20 GWh is equivalent to 7.2×10^13 joules. At sea level, the potential energy PE (in joules) associated with elevating a mass M (in kilograms) a height h (in meters) is
PE = M x g x h
Where g is the acceleration due to gravity at sea level or g = 9.8 meters per second^2. For the BOTEC I’ll use g = 10 meters per second^2. For the BOTEC I’ll assume h = 1,000 meters or approximately 3,300 feet. Using these values [g = 10 meters per second^2 and h = 1,000 meters], the mass, M, required for a potential energy storage of 20 GWh, is M = 7.2 x 10^9 kilograms.
According to https://www.google.com/search?q=weight+of+a+fully+loaded+railroad+car&rlz=1C1EODB_enUS545US701&oq=weight+of+a+fully+loaded+railroad+car&aqs=chrome..69i57.14027j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8, most railroad cars hold slightly under 200,000 pounds or slightly under 91,000 kilograms. For the BOTEC I’ll use 100,000 kilograms as the mass of a railroad car. Then 72,000 railroad cars are required to reach a mass of 7.2 x 10^9 kilograms. That’s a lot of railroad cars.
Now let’s discuss the rate energy can be recovered using such a system. According to http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/171899.aspx, a representative maximum grade for a 19th century freight train is 2.2%. Thus, the length of track required to increase elevation by 1,000 meters is approximately 45.5 kilometers.
Unless the train track is dead straight, the speed of railroad cars is limited. For my BOTEC I’m going to limit the speed of the train to 80 miles per hour or approximately 35.8 meters per second. A train traveling at 35.8 meters per second will cover the 45.5 kilometers of track in approximately 1,271 seconds or approximately 21 minutes. At a 2.2% grade, the rate of vertical drop is approximately 0.8 meters per second. At this rate in one second a mass of 7.2 x 10^9 kilograms will drop by approximately 0.8 meters. This corresponds to a potential energy loss of approximately 57.6 gigajoules every second or an energy generation rate of 57.6 GW. In summary, if you have 45.5 kilometers of track at a 2.2% grade and on which trains can travel at 80 miles per hour, assuming 100% efficiency of energy recovery as the train rolls down the track, you can generate 57.6 GW of power for a 21 minute period. If you use dynamic breaking (i.e., recover all of the potential energy loss in batteries inside the train) to slow the train down to say 8 miles per hour (3.58 meters per second), then you can generate approximately 5.76 GW for a 210 minute (3.5 hour). And if you want to recover the potential energy uniformly over a 12 hour period (43,200 seconds) by using “dynamic breaking” to slow the speed of the descending train, the speed of the train will be approximately 1.04 meters per second (vertical drop rate of 0.0229 meters per second), and power will be generated by such a configuration at a rate of approximately 1.65 GW.
Let’s summarize. With (a) 72,000 railroad cars each with a loaded weight of 100,000 kilograms, (b) 45 kilometers of track over a vertical rise of 1,000 meters, and (c) 100% energy recovery efficiency, we can generate power at 57.6 GW for 21 minutes, or 5.76 GW for 3.5 hours, or 1.65 GW for 12 hours. This BOTEC does not take into account the energy required to “lift” the train 1,000 vertical meters. At a 100% lift efficiency, (a) a 20 GW generator can supply the necessary energy in one hour, and (b) a 1.7 GW generator can supply the necessary energy in 12 hours.
I think I’ll pass on voluntarily investing my money in such a plan. However, given how our government works, I’ll probably be forced to subsidize the company.
It just occurred to me that if each railroad car was 20 meters long, the 72,000 railroad cars would stretch over a distance of 144,000 meters (144 kilometers) which is three times the length of the 45 kilometer track in my BOTEC. Not to worry. If we construct 1,000 parallel tracks, then we can run 72 railroad cars per track (1.44 kilometers of railroad cars per track). Yeah, that’ll work.
My BOTEC says the idea is so ridiculous it’s laughable, which means my BOTEC is probably wrong. Would somebody please check my calculations?
Freight trains usually run about 60MPH. Passenger rail will run up to 90MPH on good track. The faster you want to go, the better-maintained (higher cost) track you need.
Minor flaw – because you are trying to capture energy from the cars they will probably not be barreling full speed at 80mph – if you were, you probably aren’t extracting energy from the system.
It is a variation on the kucku clock principle, where you lift up wieghts by any means and let them drop while extracting energy from them.
It looks like the BOTEC is OK. The unit they describe has 11,400 weights of 234 tonnes each, or a total weight of 2.7 x 10^6 tonnes or 2.7 x 10^9 kg. This is in the same ball park as your calculation.
The difference is that these weights are stored at the top “sideways on”, as it were. They are dropped off and picked up by the drive units and stored in large sidings at the top and bottom. The drive units shuttle them up and down.
They claim patented technolgy for “a traction drive system that uses electric locomotives to carry weights up grades that are less than 10% (6 degrees) and its Ridgeline© funicular cable drive technology that can operate on slopes up to 50% (25 degrees).
They say “Following are the specifications of a 670 MW ARES energy storage system:
• Estimated capital costs $1,350kW / $168/kw-hr
• 8 hours discharge at full output
• 5,344 Mw-hr discharge capacity
• 2 rail storage yards @ur momisugly 3000’ elevation differential
• 5 interconnecting tracks between yards
• Track grade of 7.5%; 8 miles in length
• 140 4-car shuttle units
• 11,400 concrete weights weighing 234 tons each.”
I think this is broadly in line with your BOTEC.
Thank you seaice1. I’ll now continue my BOTEC using the values you provided above. The change in potential energy, deltaPE, an object of mass M incurs when displaced a distance deltah in the direction of a gravitational field of acceleration g is given by
deltaPE = – M * g * deltah
The time rate of change of the potential energy is thus
deltaPE-dot = – M * G * deltah-dot = – M * g * v
Where v is the speed of the object of mass M in the direction of the gravitational field. Conservation of energy requires that a negative change (loss) of potential energy must appear in another form. In free-fall the form that energy takes is a gain in kinetic energy, which for a fixed mass corresponds to an increase in speed. However, instead of converting the loss of potential energy into speed, it is possible to convert the loss of potential energy into useful work. Assuming the conversion of the loss of potential energy into useful work is 100% efficient, an object of mass M traveling at a constant speed v in the direction of a gravitational field of acceleration g can do useful work at a rate work-dot given by
Work-dot = M * g * v
An ARES “unit” has a mass of 234,000 kilograms. The ARES energy recovery system places units on railroad cars and rolls the railroad cars down one of five 8-mile (12,875 meters) railroad tracks each having a vertical crop of 3,000 feet (914.4 meters).
The ARES energy recovery system converts the loss of potential energy as the railroad cars roll down the track into useful work. For this discussion, assume (a) the slope (7.12%) of each railroad track is everywhere the same over its 8-mile track length and (b) the railroad car(s) travel at a constant vertical speed v, which corresponds to a constant track-speed, vt, of
Vt = 14.08 * v
The ARES system claims a power output capacity of 670 MW for an 8-hour time period. For the moment, let’s assume a single unit is rolling down each of the five railroad tracks. Then each of the five tracks must be generating energy at a rate of 134 MW. This means the unit’s mass of 234,000 kilograms must be travelling at a vertical speed of 58.434 meters per second (track speed of 822.75 meters per second). The time required for the unit to drop 914.4 meters is 15.65 seconds. Thus a different car must start its path down the track every 15.65 seconds. To generate 134 MW of power for 8 hours (28,800 seconds), 1,840 units are required. The ARES system employs 11,400 units, which corresponds to 2,280 units per track. Obviously, a track speed of 822.75 meters per second (1840.4 miles per hour) is not practical; but assuming 100% energy recovery efficiency, the system has a sufficient number of units.
Instead of employing one unit on each track at a time, employ 100 units. The required vertical and track speeds will then be reduced by a factor of 100 to the more reasonable values of, respectively, 0.58434 meters per second and 8.2275 meters per second (18.404 miles per hour). Furthermore, a new train of 100 units need only be started every 1,565 seconds (26.08 minutes). These numbers are not inconsistent with the ARES design numbers. Thus, at an energy recovery efficiency of 100%, the proposed ARES system is viable.
However, if the energy recovery efficiency drops to 50%, then the number of units per train required to generate the stated output power increases from 100 to 200, which in turn implies 3,680 units per track or a total of 18,400 units.
Let’s examine another specific case. Assume (a) we assemble trains of 142 units per train, (b) over an 8-hour period, start a train down each of the five 8-mile tracks once every half hour, and (c) let the trains travel at a track speed of 16 MPH—all reasonable numbers. Per track, such a configuration, (a) will require 16 trains of 142 units (80 total trains and 11,360 total units), and (b) will provide constant power for an 8 hour period. For this configuration on a per track basis, over an 8 hour period a mass of 33,228,000 kilograms will be dropping at a vertical rate of 0.508 meters per second. In one second, the loss in potential energy will be 165,425,955 joules. At 100% efficiency, the power generated by each track will be 165.426 MW and the total power generated by five tracks will be 827 MW. Thus to achieve the stated output power of 670 MW for an 8-hour period, the system must operate at a potential-energy-to-electrical-energy conversion efficiency of 81%. That seems awful high to me, but then I have no experience with the generation of electricity using rolling railroad cars.
Hmmm, my caboose storage post never got posted, with links and where the cabooses are stored. You can fill them with whatever, and they are rail ready…there are thousands of retired cabooses stored…
Nope. Nearly all excess cabooses have been sold off or scrapped.
I think Al Gore is still available…
Greg
but where are you going to find a big enough engine to move his caboose, see the problems are always in the detail.
Just use a big, magnetically suspended flywheel. Don’t go for speed of rotation, go for mass of rotation. Huge, slow rotating concrete flywheels store massive amounts of energy, and with magnetic suspension (and stability if you rotate it within a fairly broad range of rotational velocities. And the stress inside the flywheel is greatly reduced by cutting down the velocity – and increasing the rotational mass. A flywheel the size of the base of a windmill could conceivably store 20 MHh of energy; two could easily store the 2 day output of a typical wind turbine.
energy in moving mass proportional to mass and velocity squared.
so high rotation speed is better than lots of mass
Except that construction costs grow with internal stresses, and internal stresses scale as the square of velocity but only linearly with diameter. So you can make a small flywheel that turns fast but it is extremely expensive to build. Additionally the gyroscopic effect goes with velocity, so rotational forces on any magnetic bearings is greatly reduced by lowering the RPM of the gyroscope.
Then we get into air friction from high speed flywheels, which typically need vaccum chambers as opposed to something turning at 60-100 RPM which has no such needs.
At the base of a windmill, you have LOTS of space available. Some rebar, concrete, permanent magnets, and a little electrical and you can have a LOT of energy stored with little technical effort. Just a ~140 foot diameter spot for the flywheel.
Interesting.
Regenerative braking is also in use on UK electrified rail networks (including the ‘Tube’)
“Griff August 24, 2017 at 12:31 am
Regenerative braking is also in use on UK electrified rail networks…”
And has been for about 100 years.
Did you read Reed Coray August 23, 2017 at 9:58 pm and at August 23, 2017 at 10:35 pm comments upon the practicalities of the system before posting?
Maybe the scaling up is not as easy as suggested in the promotional material. Who would have thought that, then again the promotional material is designed to be read by lobbyists and politicians and they are not the sharpest tool in the box..
I’ve been thinking about exactly this approach for many years. It’s truly the best energy storage method available on a mass scale, and it’s cool to see someone doing it.
The biggest elevation change in Southern California is about 6,000 feet. A “unit train” (one holding a day’s worth of coal for a 1,000 MWe power plant) has a mass of about 10,000 tons. So the total energy storage capacity for this system is about 120 billion ft-lb, or 45 MW-hr. 80% of that (which, yes, is realistic) is then 36 MW-hr.
Nothing else would be as cheap, or easily built. But it is a sneeze compared to the supply and demand for energy on a grid scale. It’s the equivalent of charging 424 Tesla Model S roadsters. That alone should tell you how difficult the problem of storage is.
Sounds like a souped up version of the good old clock mechanism using weights that needs to be “rewound” once a week.
The question is what happens when the train hits the bottom of the track and there is no surplus to wind it back. Also a train run can only be for a short period of time as long tracks will both be impractical in terms of acreage and rewind time. Meaning the system can only be used for peak loads topping up the general supply for short periods.
The Iron Ore Line (Malmbanan)
In Scandinavia, the Kiruna to Narvik railway carries iron ore from the mines in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on the way down to Narvik, and these trains generate large amounts of electricity by their regenerative braking.
Any excess energy from the railway is pumped into the power grid to supply homes and businesses in the region, and the railway is a net generator of electricity.
Iron ore on the way down to Narvik
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams “the trick is to bang those rocks together, guys!”
That is a perfectly sensible scheme. Unlike building a Solar PV at Errol in Perthshire 56′ N, 1348 hours sunshine annually, or Moray 57’N also about 1300 hours annually. Despite being built on the “sunnier” side of the country. The sunniest time of year is May-June with a monthly mean of about 180 hours. Dec-Jan the monthly mean is 40 hours (less than 2 hours a day) Naturally the BBC thinks these are a wonderful investment.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-40941994
Dec-Jan is very cold up there at times and I have often been wildfowling in temps of -5C and below at that time of year.
It also snows frequently in the winter months!
This works because ALL the infrastructure is already in place. The lines, the generating capacity, the distribution system, even the weight from which you are extracting the potential energy is all provided ‘for free’. The generated power is icing on the cake.
Now suggest building the same system JUST to store power and see how viable it is.
Too bad there is so much negativity on this site. We should applaud efforts by people who are trying to find solutions to difficult problems. That’s how progress is made.
@Trebla August 24, 2017 at 4:23 am
Too bad there is so much negativity on this site. We should applaud efforts by people who are trying to find solutions to difficult problems. That’s how progress is made.
These are NOT solutions. They are not even new ideas. They are attempts to obtain access to taxpayer or venture money by joining in the ‘renewable energy’ scam.
“Too bad there is so much negativity on this site.”
That’s because most posters are capable of simple arithmetic.
Too bad there is so much sanity on this site which can be very boring. Instead we should applaud, indeed enjoy the amusement to be had, by watching people claiming to have solved a problem that was solved by Newcomen’s steam engine (patented in 1698) and later improved on by James Watt in 1781. That’s apart from those who still believe Big All and the global warming gang of course although this can in itself can be quite amusing.
Although there’s nothing at all amusing about what these ‘solutions’ to a non-existent problem has cost us or the damage it has inflicted on Western economies while somehow by some strange quirk of fate enormously benefited the communists in China who are presumably excused because they are emitting special magical Green ‘Carbon’!
@Philip Mulholland the railway is a net generator of electricity. these people have cracked the problem!
If this railway can be a *NET* generator of electricity, then just copy this railway system across the world and shut down all power generators!
Job done!
All anyone needs to know is that they put the word ‘advanced’ into the name of the thing.
Its like when they use ‘sophistikerated satistsks’ or ‘suepr cmoptuer’ or even when something ‘uprencedneded’ has been discovered.
At some point in people’s lives, they get to realise this stuff is all just fake. Huffery pufferey in a succesion of poor attempts to inflate something that is beyond inflation – increasingly lame attempts to get laid.
The ‘get laid’ attempts patently don’t work any better than than the ‘advanced’ systems.
It gets worse because the hapless 50% of the population these things are aimed at are all on anti-depressants – whether that be Prozac from their doctor or simply troughing-out on sugar and getting morbidly obese (yes Ben & Jerry, I’m looking at you).
You’ve just got to laugh