[maybe yes, maybe no ~ctm]
From Quartz
Thanks to the modern electric grid, you have access to electricity whenever you want. But the grid only works when electricity is generated in the same amounts as it is consumed. That said, it’s impossible to get the balance right all the time. So operators make grids more flexible by adding ways to store excess electricity for when production drops or consumption rises.
About 96% of the world’s energy-storage capacity comes in the form of one technology: pumped hydro. Whenever generation exceeds demand, the excess electricity is used to pump water up a dam. When demand exceeds generation, that water is allowed to fall—thanks to gravity—and the potential energy turns turbines to produce electricity.
But pumped-hydro storage requires particular geographies, with access to water and to reservoirs at different altitudes. It’s the reason that about three-quarters of all pumped hydro storage has been built in only 10 countries. The trouble is the world needs to add a lot more energy storage, if we are to continue to add the intermittent solar and wind power necessary to cut our dependence on fossil fuels.
A startup called Energy Vault thinks it has a viable alternative to pumped-hydro: Instead of using water and dams, the startup uses concrete blocks and cranes. It has been operating in stealth mode until today (Aug. 18), when its existence will be announced at Kent Presents, an ideas festival in Connecticut.
Concrete plan
The science underlying Energy Vault’s technology is simple. When you lift something against gravity, you store energy in it. When you later let it fall, you can retrieve that energy. Because concrete is a lot denser than water, lifting a block of concrete requires—and can, therefore, store—a lot more energy than an equal-sized tank of water.
Bill Gross, a long-time US entrepreneur, and Andrea Pedretti, a serial Swiss inventor, developed the Energy Vault system that applies this science. Here’s how it works: A 120-meter (nearly 400-foot) tall, six-armed crane stands in the middle. In the discharged state, concrete cylinders weighing 35 metric tons each are neatly stacked around the crane far below the crane arms. When there is excess solar or wind power, a computer algorithm directs one or more crane arms to locate a concrete block, with the help of a camera attached to the crane arm’s trolley.
Once the crane arm locates and hooks onto a concrete block, a motor starts, powered by the excess electricity on the grid, and lifts the block off the ground. Wind could cause the block to move like a pendulum, but the crane’s trolley is programmed to counter the movement. As a result, it can smoothly lift the block, and then place it on top of another stack of blocks—higher up off the ground.
The system is “fully charged” when the crane has created a tower of concrete blocks around it. The total energy that can be stored in the tower is 20 megawatt-hours (MWh), enough to power 2,000 Swiss homes for a whole day.
When the grid is running low, the motors spring back into action—except now, instead of consuming electricity, the motor is driven in reverse by the gravitational energy, and thus generates electricity.
Read the rest of the story here
Company Website
H/T HotScot
The load ALWAYS matches demand – within fractions of percent. IPOs are experts at planning and manipulating the various generating sources to insure that happens. When load does not match demand frequency fluctuates, generation too low & shed load, demand too low & shed generation. Too fast or too slow in response and bad things happen, distribution breakers open, generators trip.
Generators are usually most fuel efficient in a range around the design point. Backing off load increases the heat rate/decreases efficiency (100 * heat rate, Btu/kWh/3,412 = eff, %) and $fuel/MWh goes up as does emissions.
So, do the incremental fuel savings of maintaining optimum loads pay for installing & operating storage?
Look around. If it did, it would. It doesn’t.
Won’t work. Storing energy goes slowly. Retrieving energy, however, must be extremely fast in order to balance the varying demand on the system. Waterbased balancing systems have a zero to full power lag of a few seconds which can only be achieved when the medium is a liquid. Concrete is not a liquid. The only alternative to water would be Mercury, lots of it.
This fully renewable world that we are supposed to be “transitioning” to is going to be one fugly place isnt it.? There is no end to the junk these people want to litter over the land and seascapes
Clock makers solved the problem centuries ago. Put the weight inside the 400ft wind turbine tower. The turbine lifts the weight when the wind blows and when the wind stops the weight falls and drives the turbine (not the blades) It worked for winding up clocks in the 19th century. If you lubricate the system with unicorn oil to remove friction and use three parts of Hubris to one of cement for the weight to make it denser you have the perfect system. Patents pending.
I think there is some confusion about energy storage, pump storage is not about storing ‘excess electricity’ (More correctly excess generation capacity, which should be the normal state of affairs for 24 hours a day, this spare capacity is used to fill the upper dam at times of low demand) to compenste for demand exceeding generation capacity. It’s purpose is to allow the grid to cope with sharp peaks in demand which there is insufficient time for the dispatchable generators to increase output to match. Dispatchable power plants react automatically to load variation and this is seen by the variation in frequency. Increase in load drops the system frequency, turbine governors open up the steam valve to get the frequency back up and vice versa. A large increase in load causes a greater drop in frequency which pump storage can be used to compenaste so minimising frequency drop.
What is impractical and very expensive (Even if battery costs are lower) is to use storage in the grid to compensate for lack of renewable generation on a large scale. It is not the answer for renewable generation variability due to the very large capacity required to do that.
Accidentally I put my comment in a wrong place
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/16/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surprisingly-efficient-way-to-store-energy/#comment-2520915
This was an April Fool’s day joke, only done in November, right?
A well balanced, reliable, stable
and flexible electric network does not need any
energy storage.
With wind and solar, energy storage is simply silly at the very least.
In proper consideration of time, there is not any efficient or any minimal
required stable sustained production, let alone any actual meaningful
extra surpluses for storage.
Put simply, in case of wind and solar, “non production” undermines the
“extra surplus” over time, especially when considering that wind and solar
tuned and operationally connected to the grid continually 7/11.
Of course, wind and solar do increase instability and inflexibility in the grid.
Of course this will lead to more consideration for grid energy storage.
But it only be considered as grid storage by the grid for the grid, as means
to keep paying more and more the wind and solar, for less and less,
and efficiently and very successfully keep increasing artificially the
electricity tariffs and payments.
Crapier the grid more and more in need of considering energy storage…
and less and less efficient and more costly it becomes…regardless what
you add and hang on it, either trains or concrete blocks or else.
cheers
Having been struck by lightening at age=12, me and elektrikery have an understanding.
We have biiiiiig respect for each other and are endlessly amazed at what each of us can, and does, get up to.
This impinges upon magnetism, strictly electro-magnetism, as you don’t get one without the other unless nothing much is happening- a-la static electrikery.
Moving elekrikery is all about the GHGE of course, = transmission lines & media, impedances, short circuits, open circuits, reflections, standing waves, energy transmissions & absorptions depending on any and all of those things.
A fantastic trick guaranteed to get *most* people wondering involves 2 identical capacitors. Things with ‘capacity’, that is they store energy. Manifests as ‘voltage’ – apply a voltage to a capacitor and it ‘stays there’ after you remove the voltage source.
The energy stored follows a familiar sort of rule, it goes as ‘half C times V squared’
C = Farads and V = volts to give energy in Joules
The Trick involves 2 identical capacitors, one charged to voltage v and the other not charged at all.
Work out the energy in that system. (half CV squared)
Then, connect the 2 in parallel using as perfect a piece of wire as you can (imagine)
You will get 2 capacitors (value= 2C) and each will have half the original voltage
Now work out the energy stored and you will find exactly half of it has ‘disappeared’ – the C value doubles but the V-squared value goes down by a factor of 4
Where did the energy go?
Answer please……
Where Did The Energy Go?
Remember, you can do this experiment with perfect capacitors and perfectly conducting pieces of wire and The Energy *still* disappears..
And so it is with this sort of system. You are moving blocks of stuff, energy goes as velocity-squared and they are being accelerated and decelerated. Their motion (velocity akin to voltage) is being shared, exactly as happens with the capacitors. Energy loss or flat-out disappearance is the name of the game.
Just as in the GHGE, as combination of mechanical motion (temperature) and electricity (radiation, long wave, short wave, down welling upwelling, whatever welling radiations and energy)
Energy is not trapped, it is not stored, it weasels its way any and every way that it can.
At Light Speed.
*Only* in Science Fiction will you *ever* catch up with it.
(Or inside supercomputers and the GHGE)
sigh. an extra “2” snook in there
(energy eh, what’s it like? If even a self proclaimed genius like me can get it wrong so what hope have the rest of you?)
Should= You get ONE capacitor of value = 2C
Double sigh, despite your correction. There is no missing energy in your Gedankenexperiment. Energy is conserved. It is true that the total capacitance of two 1 farad capacitors connected in parallel will be 2 farads and that the electrical energy originally stored in the single charged capacitor (at voltage V) will be equally divided between the two capacitors upon connecting them in parallel. But you are wrong in asserting that the voltage across the connected pair will than drop to 1/2 V. Instead, it will drop to (1/sqrt(2))*V, or 0.707*V.
Peta is correct – energy is lost during this experiment. If the wire has any significant resistance, then the I^2.R loss during the current spike (with exponential decay) will exactly account for the loss. With zero resistance wire, there will be an arc at the moment of contact, with energy loss as light, heat, RF radiation…
It goes back into surrounding space from where it came.
Space is a ‘battery’, harnessing the forces is how you make temporary withdrawals from that battery.
Another ridiculous ‘solution’ to a self-created problem.
Anyway, everyone knows masonry is an excellent way to store energy – it’s called UHI, and is vastly more significant in the actual temperatures that the vast majority of people in the world experience, than the supposed role of CO2.
There’s a nice word in Switzerland for such silly ideas: “Schnapsidee”
The tower will topple at wind speed of 65 kph. The concrete blocks are not fastened. Only their weight provides stability against wind force. Bending torque calculation:
Assume: clockwise torque = weight of blocks, anti-clockwise torque = wind force
when clockwise torque = anti-clockwise torque, tower is stable and will not move
when clockwise torque < anti-clockwise torque, tower is unstable and will move and topple
concrete block = 1 m x 1 m x 1 m, concrete density = 2400 kg/m^3, stack height = 120 m
weight of stack = 2400 (9.81) (120) = 2.83 e6 N
torque arm = distance from center of mass to pivot point (edge of block) = 0.5 m
clockwise torque = 2.83 e6 (0.5) = 1.41 e6 N-m
wall area = 120 m x 1 m = 120 m^2, air density = 1.225 kg/m^3, wind speed = 18 m/s (65 kph)
dynamic pressure = ½ (1.225) 18^2 = 198.45 Pa
wind force = 198.45 (120) = 23,814 N
torque arm = distance from center of wind force to pivot point (edge of block) = 120/2 = 60 m
anti-clockwise torque = 23,814 (60) = 1.43 e6 N-m
clockwise torque < anti-clockwise torque at 65 kph wind speed, tower is unstable and will move and topple
So when the blocks reach bottom, what do you do then for electricity?
A lot people older homes have 8 or 10 inch water well pipes that were drilled over 100 feet deep but have been abandoned for city water. If you made a ten inch cylindrical lead slug (or some other metal) that weighed a ton, couldn’t you store energy the same way, with a lot less infrastructure and complexity, and no worries of wind toppling it, by lowering it up and down in that pip
The weight still reaches the bottom, leaving you in exactly the same state you would be in had you never built the storage system.
Even with lead you need some 300 cubic meter of such slugs pro house. The idea is not efficient at all.
All of this reminds me of people recommending using teaspoons to dig the foundations for skyscapers to save on using fossil fuels. It works, but’s foolish and makes the people coming up with it look desperate. Next, we’ll have dung burning stoves with massive filters to make the exhaust “safe”. However, since the stove don’t use fossil fuels, they’re will be praised, subsidized and probably worshipped. Combining 21st century lives with 14th century practices results in a sad failure. What a comment on our loss of science and understanding of the real world, eclipsed by worship of “alternate energy” to “save the planet”.
The idea is not really feasible. A typical one-family house in Europe requires around 90kWh (a week worth of consumption) of energy storage to smooth out unreliability of the renewable sources.
Now, suppose we use blocks with density 2.6kg/l, 1m block height, 10m working height. How wide will the tower be? The answer is – 20m in radius. Much bigger than the actual house. Not really feasible.
In fact I can go out right now and buy a 90kWh Li-Ion battery for 25k€. Will such 40m wide and 11m deep tower full with cement blocks and cranes be cheaper than 25k€? I seriously doubt it.
When centrally produced electricity becomes unreliable, people will acquire their own production capability. Like a diesel generator. They are not going to buy limited carry through capacity – they will still need their own generating capacity.
The homeowners’ dilemma is identical to the power companies’ dilemma. Storage does not solve the problem.
The duration of wind/solar outages are unknown. Days of storage is prohibitive, obviously not feasible. As you approach 100% renewables, you approach requiring infinite storage. Infinite storage will require infinite power supply to charge it up.
Funny you should say that.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2016/03/29/the-dirty-story-behind-hillary-clintons-clean-cookstoves-campaign/
I think I get it; this is a contest right? To see who can find a way to make this already bad idea worse while making it sound even better to the renewables crowd?
This is a tough challenge, but here’s my go at it:
One obvious drawback of the original plan already mentioned by others is we’d have to build a whole bunch of these towers, further dotting the landscape with low-density energy systems. Why not get double use out of the 100-meter towers we’re already building to host wind turbines? Build the towers a little stronger and the concrete base a little bigger and you could incorporate a lift system for a heavy concrete collar surrounding the tower.
Advantages:
1) It’s decentralized — each turbine has its own energy storage system built in.
2) It eliminates transmission losses as the surplus output of any single turbine is captured right there.
3) It scales automatically with new wind capacity.
4) It requires no more footprint than the turbine itself.
5) The heavy lift capability can also be used to get people and replacement parts up and back down for maintenance activities.
6) You get the power for the lift with a simple mechanical takeoff from the turbine shaft itself, avoiding the efficiency loss of the rotation -> generator -> electricity -> electric motor path. Likewise to get power back just use the falling concrete block to keep the turbine shaft spinning when there isn’t enough wind.
When a given turbine has more wind energy than electrical demand, tap the surplus mechanical energy from the turbine shaft and lift the concrete weight up the tower. When a given turbine is not producing enough power to meet demand, tap the potential energy of the concrete weight and make it spin the turbine faster.
If an individual turbine has already lifted its weight to the top and still has excess wind energy, surplus electricity could be used to spin other turbines whose weights are not at the top.
OK, let’s see someone top that!
And when every single wind turbine is equipped with such a system, you’ll get roughly 1GWh storage capacity for, say, Germany. Currently Germany has pumped storage of 40GWh. Do you think 1/40 of this is worth the costs? Hardly.
TOP IT?
Simples.
With a donut of concrete surrounding the wind turbine tower we have a readily available flat surface not needed for anything else to which we can attach SOLAR PANELS. These can by themselves provide more than enough electricity to power ALL the control electronics of the whole system thus increasing the input/output theoretical efficiency to 101%.
+10 for violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
“Build the towers a little stronger and the concrete base a little bigger and you could incorporate a lift system for a heavy concrete collar surrounding the tower.”
Actually, if one wants to lift a single mass equivalent to the hundreds of “small” concrete blocks of the originally proposed multi-crane system, then that 100 meter wind turbine tower is going to have to be ENORMOUSLY stronger (i.e., much more massive). Look up “Euler’s critical load” for the buckling of columns in compression. It basically says that, for a fixed tower height and given construction material, the minimum area moment of inertia of the tower cross section must scale in direct proportion to the load being hoisted, including the weight of the wind turbine on top, to avoid the tower buckling.
I’m sure this is the reason for the original proposal to use many relatively small masses as opposed to one (or several) much larger masses.
Ooops, typo . . . “if one wants to lift” . . . not “if one want’s to lift”
I really long for the day that posters once again have the option to edit their own posts after the fact.
Fixed … I hate typos.
w.
First problem. When excess energy exists, it needs to be used, NOW.
Moving a crane and using it to grab a block will take multiple minutes of time.
Secondly, I’d love to see how well this contraption handles even a moderate breeze.
Just use sodium ion batteries, as storage. Dirt cheap, and stable, as these schemes go. You can have some Lithium ion as a faster capacitor.
Why everytime stacking concrete blocks.
Lift and sink the whole neighborhood erected on a ground plate.
System weight drive clock.
Or simple mount a weight hanging in every windelecs tower.
Or just give that damned a hydraulic platform on the ground with a weight on top.