To make solar power viable, we need a solution for overnight energy storage.
Batteries are complicated.
Do you know what isn’t? Water go up. 
Can work if the environment is good for it, has the same ecological and geological problems. Artificial water towers would be quite a big project maybe?
What about a weight and a skyscraper?
Explain.
Freight elevator shaft (boring, no one uses anymore), biiiiiiigggg grand piano, cartoon cat on massive, convoluted, downward-sloping treadmill
Don’t worry he likes it :3
Will his teeth turn into piano keys following the imminent collision? What song will they play?
Unsure of the details, still waiting for my grant to get approved
Ideally we would avoid collisions cuz its unpleasant for everyone involved, especially the cat
Would set it up at the end so he narrowly escapes
Can’t play ragtime on piano teeth anymore, because of woke
The amount of energy stored from raising a very heavy block up is not that much.
About 7kwh if you replaced an elevator with a block of lead in a 10story building
So yeah not much
It’s a big battery. Useful in all cases.
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I’m more into the big wheels in concrete wells, but different solutions are required for different areas and it’s all better than fucking PtX bullshit hydrogen.
Putting the big wheels in wells is a waste. We should build them up into the sky so everyone can look at the big wheels and feel happy.
Sadly the big wheels need to be in big wells in order to conserve as much energy as possible
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I’ve also seen a version of this that uses an electric locomotive that moves a big weight up and down a slope.
Personally I think we should put big weights on pulleys in every high rise, like a grandfather clock.
How To Make Buildings Into Batteries
That link isn’t working for me:
Got error: “Sign in to confirm that you’re not a bot”
Edit: is it this one? https://youtu.be/oCv3ygvEjFo
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Could the weight be integrated with a tuned mass damper?
That’s a good idea. They already have shafts that have the capacity for big weights as well
You had me at “locomotive”. Name it Sisyphus.
Water is overwhelmingly easier to move up and down, and you need a lot of mass to make it viable.
Personally I think we should put big weights on pulleys in every high rise, like a grandfather clock.
How big? Seems like you would need quite a bit of weight to store any useful amount. Using this calculator: https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/physics/gravitational-potential.php and assuming my values are right, if you had something the size of a bus (16,000 kg) pulled up through something as tall as the Empire State Building (380 m roof height), you’d get about 16.56 kWh, which isn’t all that much. I think a typical EV battery size is about 40 kWh in comparison. With hydro storage on the other hand, you can store a shit ton of water in a reservoir without any major constraints besides the overall size, which is massive.
Plus side if youre in a rainy region you get extra energy
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You’ve like quadruple posted this comment
Fennec browser was being buggy
Site is breaking rn
Molten salt reservoir that was being used to power the servers just exploded :(
Toastify is awesome btw
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Pumping water is a lot more efficient and easy. You need a lot of mass to make it worthwhile.
Probably a way to make wind and solar more viable.
Regardless, the bulk of what will allow us to have a civilization powered by renewables is going to be cutting down consumption (and staggering it with a smart grid): not driving cars, arranging and insulating buildings so that they don’t lose as much of their temperature differential to the outside (and also don’t need cars to get around), making things that are designed to be repaired instead of replaced, using direct combustion for heat, and human-power wherever feasible.
In short, concentrating most energy consumption at point-of-use for better efficiency and less materials, and keeping the remainder direct and human-scaled.
And imho it is still going to make more sense to fill in the gaps for the base load with biomass from coppiced trees.
“Pumpspeicherkraftwerk” in German… you are welcome.
kraftwerk
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
🤖 🔊🤖 🔊
I’m a big fan of it. I’ve got a dream of one day owning my own plot and building a water tower myself to do this.
It seems like you’d lose a fair bit of energy from powering the pump and from the turbine not capturing 100% but I don’t actually know how it compares to other types of energy storage. To me it seems like you’re probably better off heating something up, like turning that pool of water into steam, or finding a material that can absorb a lot of heat but I have no actual data on that.
You’re talking about Thermal Storage, indeed a complex and costly field in the research for out-of-optimal conditions for electricity production I.e. nighttime for solar power
I know that’s a thing I just don’t know how it compares to what OP is talking about
Turbines are extremely efficient (close to 100%), and almost all large scale power sources use them already (nuclear, hydro). Powering the pump isn’t “lost” energy, it’s the energy transformed from solar into potential energy from pumping.
Of course not all of the energy used to power the pump is lost (that’s the whole idea) but there is still some energy loss. Maybe it’s only a small amount like you say with the turbine but that’s what I was referring to.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
It seems like you’d lose a fair bit of energy from powering the pump and from the turbine not capturing 100% but I don’t actually know how it compares to other types of energy storage.
