Electricity can be stored in electrical batteries or converted into heat and stored in a heat battery. Heat can also be stored in heat batteries or thermal storage, such as a hot water cylinder. Efficient gravity-powered energy storage methods can even blow batteries away for longer-term storage. A DIY Powerwall is a custom-built home energy storage system designed to store electricity generated from renewable sources like solar panels or wind turbines. It can be tailored to your specific needs and promote sustainability and reduce energy costs.
Renewable energy options on the home scale are becoming increasingly popular, with DIY projects aimed at inspiring people to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. Solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, inverters, and generators work together to produce a consistent electricity supply. Storing solar energy at home allows for reduced reliance on the grid, savings on electricity bills, and a reliable backup power source during outages. Storing solar energy at home also helps reduce carbon emissions.
Home energy storage is the future of backup power and sustainability. Learn how to build your own DIY home energy storage system and charge it efficiently. Compressed air energy storage (CAES) involves moving energy underground by using surplus power to run a rotary compressor that condenses air. Other options include providing hot water, storing heat from a solar thermal system or wood-fuelled boiler, and creating a car-sized rotating wheel for running a computer.
📹 Storing Solar Power on my ROOF!!!
Did you know the US state of California produces so much solar power they have to PAY other states to take it? Granted some of …
Is there a way to store electricity without batteries?
Electricity storage is a crucial aspect of the electric power grid, which balances supply and demand. It can be done through various methods such as pumping hydroelectric, compressing air, flywheels, batteries, and thermal energy storage. The electric power grid operates based on a delicate balance between supply and demand, and storing electricity during periods of high production and low demand can help balance these fluctuations.
This can provide economic, reliability, and environmental benefits, as well as help the utility grid operate more efficiently, reduce the likelihood of brownouts during peak demand, and allow for more renewable resources to be built and used. The environmental impacts of electricity storage are significant, and the extent to which it is deployed depends on the specific application.
How to store electricity at home?
Electricity can be stored in electrical batteries or heat batteries, and can also be stored in thermal storage like a hot water cylinder. Energy storage is beneficial for those who generate their own renewable energy, allowing them to use more of their low carbon energy. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectricity systems can be used to store electricity generated during the day, such as for boiling a kettle or watching TV in the evening.
What is the cheapest way to store electricity?
Pumped Hydro Storage is the cheapest form of large-scale energy storage, using two water reservoirs at different heights to store and generate power. Its affordability is due to its maturity and deployment scale. Gravity Energy Storage Systems, a new type of energy storage, utilize the potential energy of an elevated mass by lifting a large weight and recovering stored energy when the weight descends, turning a turbine connected to a generator. New developments in this field, such as Energy Vault’s concrete-block gravity battery, are gaining attention in this field.
How do you store massive amounts of electricity?
Energy storage is the process of capturing energy produced at one time for later use to reduce imbalances between energy demand and production. It involves converting energy from difficult to store forms to more convenient or economically storable forms. Some technologies provide short-term energy storage, while others can endure for longer. Bulk energy storage is dominated by hydroelectric dams, while grid energy storage is a collection of methods used for large-scale energy storage within an electrical power grid.
Common examples of energy storage include rechargeable batteries, hydroelectric dams, and ice storage tanks. Fossil fuels like coal and gasoline store ancient energy derived from sunlight by organisms that later died, became buried, and were converted into these fuels over time. Food, made by the same process as fossil fuels, is a form of energy stored in chemical form.
What runs your electric bill up the most?
Heating and cooling are the primary energy consumers in residential settings, collectively accounting for approximately 40% of the average electric bill. This figure encompasses other major appliances, including washing machines, dryers, ovens, and stoves.
How long can you store electricity?
Lithium-ion batteries are currently only suitable for utility-scale applications, providing power for short durations of about 4 hours. Residential storage can last longer depending on factors such as model, size, capacity, and home demands. Energy storage is gaining popularity due to its flexibility in grid operations, offering multiple services, and its versatility in various applications. Storage systems can be located in various segments of the electricity grid, such as transmission, distribution, generator, and commercial buildings or residential levels.
Renewable energy technologies like wind and solar have variable outputs, making storage technologies useful for smoothing out electricity supply and ensuring that generation supply matches demand. When charged during periods of excess renewable generation and discharged during times of increased demand, energy storage can maximize renewable energy use and minimize waste. Residential battery storage can help utilities balance electricity customer demand with power supply, aligning more variable wind and solar supply with electricity demand.
What is the best element to store electricity?
Common electrical energy storage elements include capacitors, supercapacitors, and rechargeable batteries like lithium-ion batteries. ScienceDirect uses cookies and collects data for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. Creative Commons licensing terms apply for open access content.
What is the most common way to store electrical energy?
Pumped hydropower is the most common form of energy storage on the grid, accounting for over 95% of storage. Turbines pump water to an elevated reservoir during off-peak hours, opening the reservoir when electricity demand is high. Siting these systems can be challenging due to terrain and large footprint. Emerging technologies like compressed air, superconducting magnets, underground pumped storage, and hydrogen storage are in different stages of development.
Storage vendors like NYSERDA are technology agnostic, dispatching different storage technologies using their software and procuring the technology from a manufacturing partner that best suits the site’s requirements.
What are the new ways to store electricity?
The field of emerging energy storage technologies encompasses a range of innovative approaches, including the use of compressed air, superconducting magnets, underground pumped storage, and hydrogen storage. Storage vendors such as NYSERDA adopt a technology-agnostic approach, dispatching different technologies through the use of their software and procuring storage technology from a manufacturing partner that best aligns with the site’s requirements.
Does unplugging appliances save electricity?
The term “phantom effect” is used to describe the electricity consumption of electronic devices when they are not in use. Unplugging these devices can contribute to energy savings. In lieu of unplugging each individual device, it is recommended that power strips be utilized to minimize the overall power consumption.
What wastes the most electricity in a house?
The average U. S. household spends around $115 per month on electricity to power their electrical appliances in 2019. The largest electricity consumer is heating and cooling, which consumes 45-50 percent of the household’s electricity. Other household appliances include water heaters, lighting, refrigerators, washers and dryers, electric ovens, dishwashers, and TVs and cable boxes. A study found that most households only use around 65 percent of their monthly electricity usage, with the remaining 35 going to waste due to vampire appliances.
Heating and cooling appliances use the most electricity, accounting for 25+ percent of annual electricity usage. Central air conditioners and heaters use tons of energy to keep the home set to the right temperature, while other appliances like water heaters and refrigerators use less energy. By reducing the use of these appliances and implementing energy-efficient practices, households can save on their electricity bills and reduce their overall electricity usage.
📹 The Energy Vault is a Dumb Idea, Here’s Why
The energetics version of Gadgetbahn, debunked within 4 minutes, or your money back! Thunderf00t’s video: …
Due to popular demand, there’s now a Quint BUILDs Discord server! Details on accessing it can be found on my Patreon page. If you want to discuss projects with my input, that’s the best place to go. Yes, you’ve gotta become a patron of the website to use it but that’s the best way I know to keep it clean and useful. Hope to see you there! If you liked this content and want to support more of it the best thing you can do is join my super awesome Patreon supporters who made this article possible. To become one of them visit: patreon.com/QuintBUILDs If instead you prefer a one-time donation option, here’s a PayPal address you can use: [email protected] articles mentioned: BUILDing the Alternator youtu.be/YLb4enCgnP4 Charging Station Electrical youtu.be/amu5LJaDUPY 2nd website with engineering and coaching to help you learn: youtube.com/channel/UCOEy… article from 2nd website on Pumped Storage: youtu.be/LtD_pJBZIWw Quint’s Background: youtu.be/oqES86u8eTc
Just to put into perspective, the 14.200 Joules you calculated at 2:27 are equal to 3.94 (lets round it to 4) Watts-hour of energy… That is roughly the energy stored on SINGLE alkaline AA battery (around 2.5Ah times 1.5V), or about a quarter of the energy stored on an average mobile phone li-ion battery (around 16Wh). For me is mind blowing just how SMALL is the energy stored in form of potential energy when compared to the methods we are used to every day.
Years ago I calculated that I’d need to suspend a volume of concrete that had the same square footage as my home and 9ft tall, over 35 feet in the air to have enough potential energy to power my home for a day. That quickly destroyed all ambitions I had of using potential energy as a means of energy storage.
Utah Power has a “battery” that serves the grid outside of Salt Lake City. When they need it, they open it up, when power demand is small, they reverse the pump and refill the lake that is the upper battery. The scale of the tech is huge, but the basis is functionally identical. Imagine a farm getting some of its power from solar, some from wind, and some from a gravity system. Build it inside a barn, or silo, and you would not see it. I guess you can tell this excites me. I hope your children are as excited to be part of this. By the time they are ready for college, they will have such a solid grounding in the physical sciences, they will advance quickly.
The tiny pipe is restricting flow and potential for pressure. Normally for microhydro we need to jet the water out to increase impact on the impeller. We also start with larger pipes and funnel down to smaller pipes. Also we will use up to 4 nozzles on the impeller, so a larger pipe splitting off to the 4 jets.
I like this guy! I’m thinking if I were his kid, growing up with him how much fun and interesting my life would be. He probably knows deep down the example he’s setting, but even moreso he’s a “doer” and the benefit for his kids is great! Imagine the stories his kids will tell about their Dad to their kids… lol.
It is really informative that you were able to give us a clear figure: “( 1 barrell of stored water in the roof = 1 AA Battery. ) I always wondered what the DIY equivalent was to hydropower reservoirs. Hydropower is only usefull for home owners when they have a big land plot with streaming water. Pumping up to store energy and then release it, it’s only efficient enough when talking about huge water reservoirs. Thanks for helping my curiosity.
1:18 The reason why the full jug was destroyed so much more was also because water is near incompressible, unlike air. That makes the jug more rigid on impact and thus the energy is dissipated on a much smaller area. Of course the increased mass is also a huge factor in the grade of destruction of the jug.
Sooo much educational info in this article! Now I know why we get a power bill. Paying for what we use. The fun facts were cool, when you were using items from past articles. The varying brightness of the porch lights were a great way to show the measurement of the different levels of a watt. Thanks for all of the man hours you must have put into this article. Great job! Fun to see the kids included in it, too!
Thanks for the article. I’ve been thinking of building off grid but I don’t like batteries so I was thinking of setting up a water tower. This helped me understand how it would work and also pointed out that it’s likely to be very under powered for what I need. The only major difference to my plan was that I was going to use a tesla turbine.
If you needed heat I think it would be better to store the solar recovered electricity as heat in the water barrel, because water has one of the best heat capacities of most everyday liquids. Then in the evening after the solar panels have heated an element in the water to raise it’s temp you can pump the heated liquid around radiators for a boost
That is a really fun project that you filmed for us! Thanks for sharing. It has me wondering why not use a solar thermal siphon rather then an electric panel to lift the water with an overflow that could return the water to the lower barrel. No pump or electricity needed to do the pumping, just heat from the sun. Also more energy can be stored if the lower barrel was buried in the ground and as noted below a tesla turbine would be ideal for making electricity
Thank you for the most important part – the comparison of that barrel to a battery. I’ve watched a few of your articles and liked them all, but it’s even more important to make sure people understand you CAN build stuff like that but can’t really expect something like that to be of any practical use. I wish it was – at the moment I have no good way to store solar energy so I’ve no reason to buy the panels. I’ve done the math a few times and based on my location it just doesn’t make any sense if you can’t store all of it. And any energy storage solution I’ve found is so expensive the system would never pay itself back. That’s the reason I watched this article, too.. and was happy that you spelled that important part out. =)
Reverse the tank from vertical to horizontal with an open water trough mounted above the tank same length as the existing bbl. (1/2 of the same size bbl would work and be able to collect rain water serving like a full length funnel). When it rains and no solar available use the higher elevation head pressure from the bbl in conjunction with the exiting roof rainwater for the Pelton wheel. The addition of high with the existing low pressure nozzle should theoretically increase the rain water power generation. Additional bonus of horizontal mounting could result in 40% more storage capacity, less wind resistance, less static and dynamic roof loads as well as aesthetically being less obtrusive. I can see the high level indicator (rubber duck) now floating across the open roof top trough …the envy of all neighbors
Mind you, storing your water in a semi-transparent tank may cause some plant growth in the tank from the sunlight, which in turn might cause blockages in your pipe system and overall power losses! You can just paint over this tank with a white paint instead of black to reduce the water’s heating, which also helps plant growth.
Excellent project! I make that just under 4 watt-hours of power – enough to light your table light for four hours. There are several improvements you could make to this system. The solar panel is capable of producing a lot more energy so the excess should then be diverted to charging rechargeable batteries. The closed water system should be open to rainwater input – with overflow directed to charging batteries and further downstream being discharged to watering the garden via a planned irrigation system.
Cool article, and just remember to watch out for code enforcers that want you to check the roof loading before installation, for instance solar panels often require roof framing to be checked for supporting an additional 5 psf in panel locations. Most roofs are designed for 20 to 25 psf snow load for most roofs in low snow load areas and putting a barrel of water and framing have a significant amount of weight, e.g. 55 galons * 8.33 lbs/gallon = 458.15 lbs. for just the water in a full barrel. As an engineer that designs structures, I recommend having an engineer check the roof trusses, but as adults, you can make your own choices. Trusses are usually designed initially by the manufacturers, but any structural engineer can check the loading. Maybe an engineer working for a truss manufacturer can do it more quickly. Here in Oregon and many states have weird laws about water harvesting and storage too, but many people get away with things as long as they get along with their neighbors.
I considered subscribing when I saw you relaxing on the lawn chair after you built the base on your roof… but I had to stop the article after that Morpheus joke 🤣😎🔋to subscribe. I love the since of humor and I love your style of editing. And last but not least your ability to explain this concepts in a simple fun way like throwing a gallon of water off your roof.. completely unnecessary, but appreciated.
I’d be interested in a article testing the efficiency of your contraption and showing the math used to calculate it. On a clear day, calculate the power of the sun over the surface area of your panels to estimate the efficiency of the panels, then calculate energy required to fill barrel with solar panels, then calculate the energy generated by the pumped hydro. It shouldn’t be too difficult, but could be a really informative educational article that shows how math can be applied.
Years ago we had a neighbor who built his own water powered “air conditioner “. His property had a very reliable well. He mounted an oscillating sprinkler on the ridge of his roof that ran whenever the temperature in his attic reached a certain temperature. The evaporation of the already cool well water cooled his roof, which in turn kept his house cool all summer. The water that didn’t evaporate was captured in the roof gutters and directed to his garden. So his air conditioning cost was just the electricity needed to run the pump. And keeping his roof cool in the summer prolonged the life of his shingles. I always thought it was a cool system.
I think it would be interesting to compare storing energy as a raised mass like in this article vs pressure differential like compressed air. I’d imagine compressed air wouldn’t be that efficient since it would get more difficult to pump as pressure increase so I would guess the pump would be most efficient in a small range of pressure similar to a car engine. But maybe you could show the relationship between pressure differential to voltage differentially when converting it back to electricity
Fantastic build. I’d submit though that you have some wasted energy from the water splashing off the impeller. If you could somehow print something that would deflect that splashed water back on the impeller at it’s negative vertical direction point, you’d gain a small amount of that wasted energy back. No idea if you’d even notice the difference but it’s going to increase the overall efficiency regardless
Canary Islands have a lake battery. They produce power by solar and wind and excess is used to move water from a low lake to one up a mountain . When power generation dies off the water starts to flow down pipes through hydro generators powering the cities. Awesome. And the future in my mind as is a environmentally positive battery
Thank you for this educational article which has the merit of showing a concrete example of the use of potential energy. Thank you also for stating that the stored energy is derisory for domestic use and for not encouraging everyone to hoist a cistern on the roof of their house to finally have less energy available than in the battery of their smartphone. Large-scale storage in a mountain lake is of course a different story….
Pretty good system to power off my garages solar heater/small solar panel. They heat the garage in daylight hours and a small hydroelectric would provide power to a 12v auxiliary truck heater for the night time hours. You could also use the same pump to return water to barrel. If you paint barrel black you would also heat the water which could then be run thru small thin gauge copper coils or radiator set up with small fan system to fully use the sun for night / day heat and electricity
Two things you can do to increase energy output: 1. Turn water wheel sideways and mount it inside the funnel. Use the whirlpool vortex to spin your motor. The bigger the funnel the more powerful the vortex is. This means you can add bigger blades and a bigger motor/generator to create more energy given the same amount of water pressure and flow. Think of the whirlpool Vortx as a fly wheel. Fly wheels are awesome for storing/producing energy. 2. Paint the barrel black! Seal the barrel! Let that water heat up from the sun and build up pressure. Leave a few inches of air at the top of barrel. You can also run the hot water through a second magnifying solar collector in small amounts to create steam.
The UK produces 43% of it’s electricity using renewables by using a giant version of what you did here. Two reservoirs with a hydroelectric power station between them. Wind and solar power is used to pump the water into the top reservoir and when it is needed it is run through the hyroelectric power station, refilling the lower reservoir.
This is a really cool science experiment! In terms of efficient real life applications, this is unfortunately not a viable option though. After all, we are talking about 4 Wh of potential energy for the full barrel. For all of you that are not deep into this stuff, this is about enough to power your TV on standby during one night.
Very clear demonstration of the basic concept, thanks. I also went through this thought process: I have a few solar panels that I can’t store the excess power from – I considered this approach but I’d need about a 10m tower with about 5 tonnes of water to achieve the capacity of one car battery. Like one of those water towers you see at railway stations in old Westerns. So now I have half a dozen car batteries. If someone would buy me a lake I’d be more than happy to set up some pumped storage.
To store this much energy (14,000J), you could have used a ~$60 – 500F super capacitor. It also would have been rated for high number of charge/discharge cycles (Over a million cycles. One complete charge/discharge a day means this should last 2,000 years…) Or, you could charge a single 2000mAh 18650 battery that’s going to cost just a few dollars. The breakeven point of an ultracapacitor might be yearly swapping out of an 18650 for a decade. Unless you plan on having many additional water jugs on your roof, and unless you like mechanical unreliability, I think ultracapacitors are the best solution for low power / low cost solar charging experiments. Water as energy storage does seem rather impractical. (Unless you get something additional out of it, like having emergency water available.)
Great project! In addition to that you could collect and store the rain directly on your roof and convert it into eletrical energy also. That means you would use the energy coming from the sun that has been put into the rain during the process of becoming clouds. OK just realized you already did it in another article. 😀
You could build a raincatch that feeds water into the drum in the roof. Then you get power when it’s raining, and that is exactly when the solar panels don’t output any power. And you could use the water to power your bathroom light so you are effectively using the water on the roof to shower and at the same time power your bathroom light while you shower 🙂 3 birds with one stone.
I’ve been looking for a way to do something similar and practical for years. Hint: I still haven’t figured it out. A local power company is planning the reservoir trick in Wyoming. When I asked about the water freezing in the winter they couldn’t answer that. I think a system using a thin oil that doesn’t solidify would work in cold climates on a smaller level.
As an Electrical Engineer, I can’t help but ask what the efficiency of this system is. Not because I think it will have bad efficiency, I’m just really curious. You could find out by measuring the power consumption of the pump to fill the barrel and then measure the power produced at the generator. P = IV or use a measurement device to record the data. Enjoyed the article! Cheers!
This is great! It would be a really cool variation to use a ram pump to pump the water from the same (or slightly smaller?) sized rain barrel on the ground up to the one on the roof. You could put in an overflow pipe that leads back to the one on the ground. Then – the ram pump could run forever and you’d always have power available.
Instead of having a dangerous heavy barrel on the roof, you could just have a safe system of hanging weight (even the same barrel) for example in your garage with a system of transmissions. The power from the solar panel would lift it up and in case you would need the energy, the descent of the weight would make run the power generator. I do not think I am the first person on Earth having had this idea. The old coockoo clocks used to work on similar system. I just have no tools and place to make and test it.
People have been using water to store energy for almost as long as people have been generating energy. The only problem: It takes a lot of water! I ran the numbers on this once, and it would take a swimming pool full of water to power my home for the day. Granted, I use a lot of power… Anyway, this is a really cool project and article!
4:45 2 things: 1 remove the magnetic shield from the motor to greatly increase it’s cooling. 2 – There exists no consumer level metal 3d printer; but if you had access to one, you could definitely match and even exceed that level of fabrication: did you know the SpaceX raptor engine is 3d printed! Cheers
hi, you shoul try a tesla turbine, they are more easy to 3d print, and are a lot more efficient for this use, especially when 3d printed. since the type of turbine you printed reacts some more agressive to small errors or even to missing some parts to make them efficient. with a tesla turbine, your build would be smaller, more easy and cheap to make and wouldn’t shoot all that water in all directions, because that watter shooting in all directions is essentially lost energy.
Really loving your articles…..i m from small village, from india, palghar dist maharastra….. I do all this things whc you are doing, been working on hydrogen…..for very long, even had few serious blow ups, tht hapen wen i was running 70 cc gasoline byke, scooter on hydrogen…..as hav big place to work have no neighbours thts is good part of it, but people do knw me for all this things, fire crackers blow ups and so on😅
Sooooo, you use a whole panel to pump that fluid up there, and then use flow down to power a small impeller driven motor? Seems like a bad idea due to loss of energy from pumping up and down… I mean it’s a neat idea for rain water, but this just doesn’t seem like a good storage device for energy dissipation. Maybe for a single phone? Seems pretty silly. I think this is good for powering self driven water systems, but painful for winter. Water pressure for your garden needs not too bad if you have a rainwater collection downstairs and pump it back up during the day for use the next day… pump-dream.
Hey Quint, i do understand the experiment, but that little solar panel connected to a solar charge controller charging a car battery that powers a inverter or even a 12v phone charger would produce more power. The hydroelectric power generation i prefer needs a river of sorts. But as i said, i do understand the experiment.
For the impeller, you’re losing most of your power from inefficiency. You’d be better off making what looks like a regular pump or turbo, where water enters and does a rough U shape around the impeller, before jumping out the other side. That will increase how much power you can get, since the water will be transferring every into the impeller for longer. Currently, it’s basically hitting one blade and then bouncing all over the place, which means most of the waters energy is going into the bounce, not the blade. By having it take a U path, it will leave the blade with as little energy as possible. You’d need to mess around with how high you can get the exit, and even how large you can make the impeller. Alternatively, you could place a generator near the top, and repeatedly stack them, maybe with some distance between each one for gravity to transfer some energy back into the system. In theory, you could even set it up so the up and down path is the same, where the pump that sends the water up into the roof barrel becomes the generator that reclaims the energy. But as you already have a working system, I’d say that would just overly complicate matters.
If i can go back in time, I just need one million people like you, make my own country. Discover fission bomb in 1920 ( 30 years earlier), build nuclear reactor in 1930, win world war 2, dominate earth in 1945, landing in moon in 1950, starting mars research in 1960, robot landing in mars in 1970, achieve 100% renewable energy on earth in 1980, send first human to mars in 1990, place satellite on mars’ orbit in 2000, build farm, plant and breed earth animals on mars in 2010, build a city on mars in 2012. Now I am typing this comment on Mars, in 2022.
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1) Earth’s gravity is too weak to make compact batteries. Such a huge barrel was able to fit a miserable 14k Joules = +-4Wh. For example, the average smartphone battery holds 20Wh. 2) I am sure that the efficiency of this generator is somewhere around 20-30%, definitely not higher than 50%. And this means that out of the miserable 4Wh we lose more than half)))
0:21 This is where the lie comes in. You are only storing ~4 Wh of potential energy on your roof. That’s a truly minuscule amount of energy. In fact, you can find AA batteries which store more energy. Also, of course you are getting nowhere near 100% conversion of that potential energy to electricity.
“Honey, the neighbor is up on the roof again, throwing water jugs at his son.” “Eh, let them be, you never know if these types of people have automatic knife launchers or something.” “Knife launchers? The kind of ideas you get, you might be the crazy one here.” “I’M JUST SAYING HONEY, YOU NEVER KNOW”
The best way to store energy for long term is magnetising ferrite and then converting its magnetism into electricity and then when magnets lose their magnetism, magnetising them again after few days or months. Patents have been granted to magnetic battery and many youtubers have also replicated it, but it still has not hit the market yet, or may be in China they are using it on small scale.
This seems to me to be the most complicated way to get almost no electricity at all. I guess your gain is the fun of building and figuring stuff out 😂 I would go for solar panels on the roof and get power from that instead. And use the water in the barrel with a solar water heater to get a hot shower. In the mediterainian countries you se this on every roof. and instead of pumping water with a small electric pump why not conect a hose to your tap in the garage and just open it? 😎
@9.10 “I got nothin'” – I have many testing devices, when brand new fails, I tend to give up in disgust. Like, how the hell can you ever win when you have to test and replace brand new? Why should you even have to? The other concern for the ordinary homesteader interested in energy storage, is that the efficiency of off-the-shelf water-drive generators is pathetic. To do this well you need some pretty high-tech miniature Pelton wheel, matched perfectly to your DC motor/generator in terms of speed and torque. Beyond most of us, even if we had a 7 metre structure capable of supporting and sustaining 200kg in all elements. Great experiment, but just not a feasible experiment to replicate for most of us.
Yes, i had that same idea years ago. Build Tanks on the top of cities. Pump Water up, or catch the Rain. Or maybe both. Than release when demand is high. And use turbines in the plumbing. You could also use turbines in the regular plumbing of waste water. But i calculated it like you did and was really shocked to see how little energy i can store in a 1000L Tank about 10 Meters up. You maybe can power a 50w lightbulb for an hour. Or something like it. Maybe i should calculate it for an entire city. At least it rains a lot here in cologne germany 😉 Awesome article! Thanks
I have 13.2 kW of solar panels on my roof that generate far more than my 5 kW grid export limit (my solar installer played a dirty trick on me). To make use of the (up to) ~8 kW of excess solar generation during the day, I have been exploring options … The easy route: add LiPo4 batteries to store excess power during the day for use at night (and/or exporting the stored power to the grid at night would be a really nice bonus as well). The adventurous route: I also have a currently unused 5,000 gallon concrete water tank on the hill behind my house to provide an upper reservoir, a spare household electric water pump (needs a simple repair to fix a leak), a spare 5,000 gallon water poly-tank full of water below my house that I can use to provide a lower reservoir, and enough poly pipe lying around … I need to get an appropriate impeller and generator and hook these up to my house, ideally so that my solar panels, solar inverter, meter panel, etc are happy with the water generated electricity feed … Or, maybe more simply, add special power points to my house that power my nighttime appliances directly from the pumped storage generator without this being grid connected. It would be a lot more fun to go the pumped storage route.
If it’s not sunny or windy when you reach for the light switch where is the energy going to come from? Why did you go to fossil fuels instead of the Battery from the solar and wind you Did have? You live in a city. Most are incorporated and have contracts with the local electric company to push grid power. There are tons of people who use solar and wind daily not connected to a grid who live normal lives powering everything they need. To me the Push for large city based energy storage to replace or supplement the utility companies are just another ploy to keep those companies in power for their monopolies. It’s individual power solutions that give citizens freedom.
125 years ago my Swedish Great-Grandfather put a water barrel in the attic. I don’t know how big, or how he got the water up to it, windmills were very popular in that part of Idaho. It provided the house with pressurized water. Hence an indoor toilet. Great if it worked in the Idaho winters. The house is still there. I doubt the system is
This solar panel is being taken out of service for direct use during the day meaning that it’s production capacity would need to be subtracted from the output of the battery. Through conversion efficiency is decreased and there is a net loss. However, as an auxiliary for light duty (such as lighting) this could be feasible, using a second panel for primary power. There are vortex systems that produce far more efficiency.
I did not check all other comments, and I’m 3/4 perusal the article. But my humble opinion is that youre wasting a lot of potential energy with that sort of watermill. I can tell because those water drops flying all over are that wasted energy. Maybe something inspired by water dams would do better. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty cool project.
Water is easy to deal with, but there is ‘resistance’ to the flow in the hose. Another way is to use a pole and lift a weight on it using just a screw from a motor-generator and then you can use heavier material, like lead (say from lead-acid batteries…and store the energy in them too until their wear out)
I see your point as something like this can easily be scaled up to power a home for a night or more all from storying the sun’s energy during the day. But, to maximise things you have to do your research on the most efficient designs for the pump, electric generator(s), and container storage setup along with all other related things needed. Something like this can be designed into a homes construction and if your a good designer it will complement the home adding to it’s value.
I can tell you now; the maintenance costs ALONE on this thing would be eye-watering. Anything involved in lifting apparatus has to be replaced after a certain number of cycles, and assuming these things are lifting and lowering blocks nonstop, which they would be, the lifetime of cables, bearings, pulleys, would be, at a guess, less than two years. I reckon just the cost of lubricating that thing would cost around 100k a year, probably more. Upkeep is so often kicked under the rug when they announce these big scams. Think about wind turbines – compared to this, they hardly have any moving parts Water based gravity batteries are better. Period.
As someone who works in software. “The software will handle it” is usually the marketing department or the managers engaging in magical thinking. I can’t tell you how often I have been approached to implement a feature that is literally forbidden by the laws of physics that they already promised to their stakeholders with a deadline (of course before ever asking anyone with an engineering degree).
Also to add to the issues with this thing, cranes have a whole lot of big and small parts constanly under stress, which means lots of wear. I work at a crane rental/maintenance hub and not a single week goes by where atleast one crane of ours has something wrong with it and needs some someone to go fix it asap so construction work can continue. They will need to build a house on top of this thing and have the mechanic live in it or something, in order to keep it running efficiently
I have a genius idea on how to make your system even more energy efficient. You can use solar energy to boil water from the lower reservoir, and then you can recondense it in the upper reservoir so that it doesn’t need to be pumped. Then when you need additional energy, you can allow the water from the upper reservoir to spin the turbine and dump into the lower reservoir. I call this variation the DumbAss Modification… Or DAM for short.
‘Software’ is the same as movie producers saying, ‘We can fix it in post production.’ I am industrial designer, and I am ALWAYS stunned by how these ideas never seem to account for weather, wear-and-tear and maintenance time and costs. The US Army’s Alaska command always has to deal with new designs that use water in their systems. When they see that, they just put the product, reagardless of size. in the Alaskan winter and watch all of the lines and containers with water freeze and burst.
I love how I live in Tasmania, a state of Australia that produces more hydroelectric and therefore carbon zero energy per capita every year than any other state, meaning we were closer to 100% clean energy than any other state. But in 2017 the Turnbull government created the NEG, which in short forced our state-owned electricity provider Hydro Tasmania to buy power from privately-owned mainland power companies. These are the same power companies that go all “BROOO TECH BROoo” on us whilst running on mostly coal power. Coal power they’re too lazy and greedy to divest themselves of, so I’m forced to use their coal while they use our hydro and wind and solar. So now, I’m forced to buy coal power from a monopoly as I can’t afford solar panels for my own home. And as Hydro Tasmania privatisation is on the cards from the state Gutwein government, my power bills are probably going to soar. So now, thanks to tech bros demanding their “fair share” from the federal government and leeching off the taxpayer at great expense, I live in a state that uses 90% carbon zero energy running on coal power for several times the cost. Thanks tech bros
I gritted my teeth when I heard of the idea of sticking it right next to wind turbines… Wind turbines are very sensitive to obstacles in the flow path of the air. There is evidence of wind parks influencing each other over distances of 70km. So building a giant wind obstacle right next to a wind park is about the dumbest thing one could do…
I actually saw the prototype in Ticino Switzerland a couple of years ago. Its just opposite the railway station in Arbedo. It was an utterly bizarre looking thing. Took some photos and found out what is was… Interestingly enough, my immediate thought was about the CO2 emissions of creating the concrete blocks. I studied civil engineering at uni and remember one amazing statistic from the materials lab… To manufacture 1kg of cement (the bonding material of concrete) creates 25kg of CO2! I cycled past it again in the spring this year and it was being dismantled. As shown in the article, an alternative to concrete is rammed earth, this is a versatile building material that’s been around for millennia. Using a less impactful bonding agent (say lime) this could be a viable alternative.
Also, like flywheel energy storage, the problem is that one can’t practically extract all the energy in the system: the energy in the bottom half of the pile is very low, and cannot be economically extracted. In reality, it would be better to start the pile on a hill of rock. Like, erm, pumped storage.
Another big benefit of pumped storage hydroelectricity over the “Energy Vault” is that it can be started during a blackout, while most other powerplants need some power to start up. You only need to open a valve after all. I doubt the Energy Vault would be capable of that, as the cranes need power to just get the blocks off the tower.
It also doesn’t stack up to water towers, where you will always will have potential energy stored at a minimum height. As you continue to remove blocks from the top, the max height you can drop them from and thus get energy from decreases. Heck, why build the whole thing out of the cement blocks, just build most of it with whatever material or do it off the side of a cliff and sprinkle a few blocks to drop on top of that. Cement is expensive.
As an environmental engineer I want to thank you.. a lot.. seriously. “Hey, let’s stack a lot of concrete above ground.”-“Wow, that’s so smart! In that way we could store half the energy a hectare of forest would store on twice the area and while building it emit only twice the CO2 the same forest would store in 4100 years!”-“Yeah, nice!”-“Also it looks a lot better than the forest of course. Because who would like to live in lush green landscapes rather than a grey concrete desert.” 🙈
Okay, so pumped-storage hydro actually does everything this system promises to do – awesome! The obvious problem is that natural sites suitable for pumped-storage hydro are super rare. So the questions are, how can you artificially create such a system at minimal cost and environmental impact, and could that possibly be cheap enough to be economically viable?
Pretty dope and concise article. One potential criticism is you do need a source of large body of water as well as a terrain that lets you pump water up and down (dam or mountain). Not all urban communities have the space or geography to accommodate that. So using the underground gantry version of this actually might actually have a justifiable use casa
I visited the Grand Coulee damn when I was a kid and the tour guide explained how the pump water up into canals above the damn overnight and then let it back down to generate electricity during the day. And I thought, oh, that’s smart! I mean, what could be better than that? Water is super easy to move and it doesn’t break. And then a few years ago my friend’s boss was talking about how much wind power sucks because we need some way to store power for peak usage times. And like, what are we gonna do? Build a bunch of batteries? So then I told him about the hydroelectric method for storing energy and it totally blew his mind. It’s surprising how few people know about this and also explains why people can fall for a ridiculously stupid idea like block stacking.
I remember when I first had a similar idea to this some time in my high school years. I was imagining massive concrete monoliths in backyard that can be raised/lowered depending on renewable supply. Did some quick napkin math and realised that you’d need such a massive pile of concrete to just cover the energy needs of one household that the entire idea wouldn’t be feasible. Not even considering the impact of CO2 emissions etc. And then afterwards coming to the same realisation that dams already exist.
I feel like people are forgetting the biggest problem with this; what if these tall skinny towers with nothing supporting them, fall? There’s literally no skeleton or anything to hold these in place. If one of these things gets swayed by the wind while being lifted up/down and it knocks the tower, it’s gonna be a super high tower of concrete bricks crashing to the ground followed by 5-6 cranes. That sounds safe!
The heavier weight of concrete or stone does have the benefit of higher energy density for a height traveled which is similar to another old technology called a hydraulic accumulator. Basically, a big vertical cylinder with a heavy weighted piston. Water is pumped into it, lifting the weight to store energy. The constant-ish pressurized water was then available to run hydraulic machinery. Historically this was used to operate cranes and other heavy machinery with earlier steam engines
The level of precision required as shown in their animation of lifting a single block is absolutely crazy. It assumes that all blocks will be both manufactured and placed correctly every time. It also assumes that the cables won’t wobble in the slightest. Also the design shown looks extremely weak. It’s a half-pipe with a half circle rotating completely out from under the half circle, with no support other than potentially a shaft near the edge of it, while it’s carrying a load on the other edge. That design would break on the first occasion.
pumped storage is great, but it does require favorable geography and oftentimes flooding existing developments. That is just to say it isn’t idiocy to consider other forms of gravity storage. though, yeah, this tower is dumb. if you are in an arid climate or land area is at a premium, maybe you just have to rely on chemical storage? what do you think
Instead of a bunch of blocks, my concept was a single mass (per station) of a bunch of waste materials in shipping containers that goes up/down incrementally. This would also allow for that mass to lift a heavier mass an increment when it is full. Other ideas include pressurized air (we could perform some chemistry at high pressure to only release oxygen and nitrogen back into the atmosphere
Funny, I started perusal this having not heard of this idea. Within the first 10 seconds I was thinking, surely we could get it to do some useful work, like a hydroelectric reservoir, which also can supply water to a city… As someone who has programmed computers, I also laughed at the ‘software will handle it’ quote – this is only ever used as an argument by people who don’t understand programming, the limitations of software and the massive amount of time needed to get a buggy system up-and-running, let alone a failsafe buggy one (no such thing as a system of more than 20 lines of code that is bug-free).
I love how in your latest articles you bring it around to existing “innovations.” You prove a thought I had for along time – investments in “cool technology” might make people feel better because we like to think of ourselves as this brilliant species that makes stuff, but in my mind it’s time and resources that could be spent on… hmmm, I don’t know land and water conservation and regenerative agriculture subsidies to make sure the right practices of producing food are incentivized.
Yet another point you didn’t consider: This concept only ever makes sense if there is any actual height difference between your blocks. And the less height difference there is, the less energy you can extract. So your “empty” situation basically is all blocks at the same level (so you could replace the “inner” block up to that level simply with a solid foundation), and the lower your storage goes the less efficient your system becomes (because you have constant time attach/detach operations -> the lower your delta goes the higher your waste). And lets not even talk about the crane arms travelling empty half of the time.
Listen, I’m extremely skeptical of energy vault, but let’s be real for a second about pumped hydro… Unless I’m mistaken it’s pretty well established that we do not have enough suitable sites for sufficient pumped hydro storage, to say nothing of the location of these sites relative to major urban areas. Also, as we’re seeing here in Ontario Canada, pumped hydro projects can get the same type of opposition as wind farms. Some of it pure NIMBY-ism, some of it legitimate concerns about environmental impacts on the local area. As I said, I’m skeptical of energy vault too. I think there are probably ways to make the basic premise of “lifting heavy things as energy storage” more practical than what they’re proposing. But capping off your argument with “Why don’t we just do this thing?!” when that thing is inherently not scale-able and geographically limited kind of undercuts your argument.
I remember musing on the idea of “gravity storage” years ago. Then, I sat down and did some basic physics calculations and realise the scale of weight (or height) needed made it impractical when using solid weights (I was thinking of storage for individual homes). It is remarkable to see that someone spent more than the $0 and 20 minutes I spent thinking about this and concluded it made sense to move forward.
Old railcars corkscrewing around a hill, fill ’em up with rubble, old concrete and heavy crap that was going to get landfilled anyway. Use the rails as busbars or run some overhead wires, and you have something that can store a whole bunch of potential energy in areas where water might be at a premium. This isn’t exactly a new idea either, but I guess it doesn’t look as pretty in CG.
All other considerations aside, how are they going to ensure that the fully built tower of blocks is stable? If you were building a permanent tower of concrete like that, it would be necessary to tie all the blocks together with steel ties or similar. As it is, they’ve just got a tower of loose blocks – I wouldn’t go within a mile of that thing. Bear in mind, these wouldn’t have been carefully fitted as with traditional stonework – they’ve been stacked automatically at a rapid rate and get un-built and rebuilt every few days – how long before it falls over?
Unlike the extremely simple mechanics of a water storage system, Energy Vault relies on multiple complex crane systems all working in complete synchronization. A single point failure would render the entire system inoperable and repair logistics would be measured in days and weeks rather than minutes and hours.
It is astonishing that investors would back this idea. One ratio that is out of whack is the required investment per kWh of energy storage. Cranes are very expensive pieces of machinery. Touchy, sensitive, and requiring great skill to operate and maintain. The article mentions wind, the mortal enemy of tower cranes. The usual rule is that you must shut the crane down before the wind hits 40 mph. The maintenance expense would also prove to be a problem. The ropes wear out and have to be replaced regularly. It’s a big, expensive job every time. The structure also develops fatigue cracks that require expensive repair performed by skilled ironworkers and welders. The “duty cycle” would be equivalent to near constant operation moving the full rated load. Very destructive. Finally, utility-scale capacity would come only with immense outlays. This thing is an expensive toy and a science experiment that will serve to test things that are already known. It’s not cost effective, and this could have been shown on paper without building a thing.