Not a problem. Hated to shoot you down, but most people don't realize how little energy current batteries actually store. That is the biggest weakness of DIY electrical generation.....a lack of a means for adequate energy storage.
The most obvious solution is to dump it into the grid, but that really doesn't help much since you generally sell at wholesale prices and then buy it back at retail. So you have to dump in massive amounts more than you use in order to overcome your inability to store it adequately. Of course, in a few places they force the electric companies to pay full retail price, but that's not really fair to them since they can get an equal amount of power cheaper, and at full retail they make nothing on the deal despite the fact they have all the overhead and STILL have to supply you power when you're not generating. Plus the grid interface is a couple of thousand dollars and absolutely necessary.
The day someone comes out with a 'shipstone' storage cell, it will change the world.
Shipstone - A theoretical energy storage device by Robert A. Heinlein that could store massive amounts of electrical power in very high energy density device that could be made in a massive variety of sizes and capacities.
At night use a 10 ton rock and some block and tackle to run a generator like an old grand father clock runs... you crank it up with a block and tackle by hand and then it turns a DC motor all night as it falls that generates electric. Use a gravity generator.
Or pump water into a BIG tank all day with solar and let it fall all night. use two tanks and pump the water from one to the other and make it a slow rotating 1 revolution per day solar powered engine.
Assuming 20 feet elevation that equals 533,374.8 joules or about 148 watt/hours assuming 100% efficiency in your conversion to electrical energy.
His golf cart battery holds more energy.
10 tons of water equals 317 gallons from the above calculation we know that equals 148 watt/hours.
A golf cart battery is 360 watt/hours which equals 771 gallons of water at
20 feet.
To equal both of his batteries you would need a 1,542 gallon tank weighing some 49 tons with the water having an average height of 20 feet above the ground.
That seems like it's workable to me.... With more solar and wind it could be pumped fast enough to create two or three revolution.
So you have the power of two or three batteries each day... and I worked with stuff that weighed 10 ton and it's serious but NOT impossible (ever been to coral castle in Florida) it was built by one man.
Ever seen the Pyramids in Egypt.... moving 10 ton is NOT imposable. The question is how long will the engine you build last and are you willing to invest into a power source that you will likely die before you recoup the money from it? It can pay for its self, it just may take a long long time.
You are changing the rules. (and you have just left the realm of science and engineering.) You are saying if you had more energy to start with, you wouldn't need as much energy because you could use it twice.
For starters, you don't need storage if you're currently generating. If your storage comes from solar, it's mindless to use the storage when the sun is shining. It might be a short term boost but that comes out of your later capacity.
Draining your gravity reserves when there is solar power available is counter productive. You will be using solar derived power from your reserves at the same time you are using solar power to replenish the reserves. TANSTAAFL.
The only energy source that HAS revolutions/cycles is solar. There is no way to mess with the timing of what's there. With wind you get what you get, when you get it. No messing with that either other than having enough storage to hold you until the next wind comes along.
Tell us how it's done. I've read some theories but I think it's still qualified as a mystery.
Tell us how it's done. Again, lots of theories on this one, they all seem to have one or more holes in them. Personally, I like cranes on sky hooks tethered to flying saucers, piloted by Masons and Templar's. GPS guidance courtesy of the Illuminati.
Or will necessity be the mother of invention for you, just in time, after TSHTF? "Could be if you knew how" is another free lunch.
In any case, better have lots of farm land to feed all that slave labor. Hey, I know, use the slaves instead of storage energy to get your work done. Feed them well and they are self reproducing so forever maintenance is not a big issue and requires little engineering.
Basically just to water livestock. They pumped it up into the tank when wind was available and watered the livestock from the tank when it wasn't. They did not use it's return to earth as an energy source.
with an efficiency loss
with an efficiency loss
with an efficiency loss
Get those pesky losses under control and you have a perpetual motion machine that goes and goes but has no useful output. Wonderful. Write it up and send it to 0bama.
Pumped storage has been used for at least 70 years. They use excess energy from the grid when it's available rather than build a whole parallel infrastructure to run the pumps. It's not efficient but it does conserve water and stores some energy that would otherwise be lost.
"The only way to store a significant amount of energy is by having a large body of water located on a hill relatively near, but as high as possible above, a second body of water."
As in a hydro-electric dam which is what I was referring to. I neglected to mention that as it's been covered in recent threads and I got to lazy to write it all out again.
"Jim Wilkins" wrote in news:lh7h4c$fel$1@dont- email.me:
However, in many cases, the cost of pumping the water to the higher source is usually higher than any savings from the flow back into the lower source. But, yes, it will store it. ;)
One of the buildings I worked in in California had the top floor as a large water reservoir. If the electricity got interrupted, the water on the upper floor could be drained through the sprinkler system for fire protection.
I hope NOT.... I think I was saying that more energy in and you get more energy out. To get what might be enough for a typical useful energy supply. It looked like you were telling me that a battery would charge and do the same as the size I was suggesting so I was upping the amount of energy and thinking 2 or 3 batteries would be closer to being useful and to do that you need to maybe increase the speed of the cycle or the number of gallons. To do that you have to pump more water and that takes more solar and wind. The lifted water is only storage of energy it never created any energy.... So I'm replacing the batteries with the elevated water, is all. The batteries have a short life and are toxic waste with the lead/acid and they don't store all that much energy and yet neither did the elevated water(not as much as I had been guessing) but there are ways to increase the waters stored energy, and you can do it without buying more batteries and dealing with more lead and acid and throw away batteries that last only 4 or 5 years.
Not that water lifted is the best option but it's an option and given all the eco-socialist pet peeves, we need to examine all the options.
I still like it and I don't think its the best for all situations but I think the elevated water is NOT bad.
The solar would be storing the energy by lifting the water. to use that energy the gravity turned a generator. It only needs to generate when there isn't enough sun or wind to supply the electric you are drawing. You'd only need enough solar/wind capacity to keep one tank always full. And being on the grid would make the whole concept redundant, it's for storage and a link to the grid makes the need for storage a moot point.
The place where I was wrong is that more than one rotation per day would mean you need to pump water at night and then you're back to what if there is NO wind.
The way to make it a more stable energy source is to make the water cycle slower.
The better idea rather than moving the tank with gravity is to move the water and use a water driven turbine to turn the generator. The tank atop a multi-story building or up a hill and the turbine at the base only make it turn the generator while you use electric and when the load drops the water stops. But then that's back to pumped storage like you can do large scale with an upper and lower dam.
1 cycle every 2 days means that you need 2 days of no wind or sun for it to run down.... so it would require more water or more elevation or a combination to get the 2 day cycle. The idea being to make it more stable than batteries where you may need a lot of expensive batteries over 30 years and yet the water being pumped to store the energy for a 2 day storage capacity may be cheaper over the long haul of 30 years of maintaining enough batteries to do the same thing. Batteries are cheap enough today but what will they cost in 15 years after the EPA is done regulating them.
The big question is will something fantastically cheap and easy come along and make this water/solar engine useless and make it a waste of money or more hassle than it's worth?
So basically now you're talking 100 to 150 tons of mass.
What is going to be your structural support? How much will it cost in materials and fabrication? How will you insure safety not only for the operation but from children getting into the works?
Do you suppose they would allow this in your average suburban neighborhood?
Increasing the speed of the cycle doesn't increase your overall power. It just means you're having more charge/discharge cycles.
Well, we're already at over 1,500 gallons simple to replace 2 golf chart batteries that cost about $120.
How much do you plan to spend on your water tower, and do you suppose your neighbors would complain?
Yep, so now your generating plant has become larger and more expensive......
Yep, and you've got to pump a lot of water and/or pump it very high to make the energy storage really significant.
How much do you suppose all this would cost?
Great, less storage for more expense and less suitable for people to use.
About 8 years, longer if you don't subject them to as many deep discharge cycles.
More than your 10 ton block, or an equal amount of water....or do you plan to put up a 200 foot tower in your backyard?
Sure, you can increase the height. Do you suppose the neighbors would object to you building a 200 foot water tower in your backyard, assuming you can get the permit to do it?
Only if you're subjecting the batteries to a continuous series of deep discharge cycles. If you limit it to 50% or less, you can easily get 8 years or more.
And for what your project would cost they could buy replacement batteries for the rest of their lives and still have money left over.
It's been examined and for the small scale being considered....not worthy of more consideration.
Then you go right ahead and start building that water tower in your backyard. How many 10s of thousands of dollars do you suppose that will cost you?
Except you can't be assured that you will always have the sun out or the wind blowing. As such, you can't insure that one tank will always be full.
Oh, and if you've got enough capacity to pump enough water all the time to run the generator....why don't you just use the power from the solar panels and hook your generator directly to your windmill?
What advantage to you seen in introducing additional loses into the system, if you're not using it purely for energy storage?
Unless the grid is down, when means you're down anytime the sun is down and the wind isn't blowing.
Maybe we need some sort of energy storage to handle those sorts of events?
Doesn't matter if you spin it like a freaking ferris wheel. You are not going to generate any more power than your solar/wind generation capacity will provide. The ONLY purpose of your 'wheel' is as an energy storage device, and it's storage capacity is limited by the potential energy of the mass at some elevation. Once that mass reaches the lowest point......blackout.
How does slowing it down alter the stability of your solar/wind generation capacity?
Ya, think?
Sure, everyone lives next to a multi-story building that will let you put a big tank that when full is going to weigh many tons on their roof, and of course if you don't live there then naturally you have a big hill right next to you and no one is going to mind that you run a pipe through their property and put a big water tank at the top.
If you have solar energy at the moment, just use it. Skip all the extra steps; they just cost you efficiency.
That was my point. One solar cycle per day is all you get. Anything else is foot shuffling. If you bye more solar, you have more energy, as you say. But you can't run multiple solar cycles per day.
Realistically most work is done in the day time, so direct consumption would be the rule.
A little lighting, some security, and maybe some sort of domestic water would be all you would need and that's small stuff. A pressure tank on the latter will take that out of the picture with reasonable conservation.
Electronic loads are small stuff compared to heating or doing mechanical work. You can even have some TV.
PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.