Grid level concrete battery

josip

I think it's just marketing pictures in the link below.

https://newatlas.com/energy-vault-concrete-tower-battery/57164/

Capt'n Midnight

But those pictures are just wishful thinking. I've no problem with the 90% claim, it's the capital cost and running costs nevermind the NIMBYs.

The company says each tower can be built to have a capacity of up to 35 MWh and 4 MW peak power based on their size

CBA working out the size, but compare to Turlough Hill which has a head of 549m and can store 2.3 million tonnes of water.

The Poolbeg chimneys are 207m tall so you'd need 6.1 million tonnes of weights for something that high. Any smaller and you need more weight. Even if you only use concrete for the cases that's an awful lot of carbon emissions to produce the cement.

Yes it could be quick, but demand shedding could be even quicker. There's plenty of pumps and storage heaters out there.


BTW You can use dry insulated concrete to store heat.

Markcheese

Wasn't there something about storing current in the actual concrete recently?
I assume theres zero chance of another turlough hill ever being built in Ireland, on cost and environmental grounds?
Its probably the most effective grid level battery going...

Capt'n Midnight

Markcheese wrote: »

I assume theres zero chance of another turlough hill ever being built in Ireland, on cost and environmental grounds?

Well there's that 360MW Silvermines one down in Tipp.

https://www.nenaghguardian.ie/news/roundup/articles/2018/09/08/4161546-progress-with-silvermines-hydroelectric-plan/

Markcheese

I'd totally forgotten about the Silvermines. since that's being developed privately, I assume they're negotiating with Eirgrid on payment,
Anything that helps reduce spinning reserve and peaking plants seriously reduces emissions,

https://youtu.be/lB4UZMN7LtM

I found this on youtube earlier, nothing groundbreaking, but still...

AngryHippie

That is pretty ridiculous to be fair.

The Carbon footprint of reinforced concrete is way too large for it to be just be used as counterweight.

Containers of compacted soils and gravels have 75% of the same density at a fraction of the carbon input.

Water, pumped storage, a smart grid and load shedding is the answer to the question.

Pretty marketing pictures though :rolleyes:

josip

AngryHippie wrote: »

That is pretty ridiculous to be fair.

The Carbon footprint of reinforced concrete is way too large for it to be just be used as counterweight.

That was my initial reaction also, but it does say further on in the article:

Another possible argument against the system is that concrete is one of the most environmentally damaging materials to produce, so building the components in the first place could leave a big footprint. But Energy Vault says the blocks are made out of concrete debris that would normally be headed for landfill, reducing both cost and waste materials.

Akrasia

josip wrote: »

That was my initial reaction also, but it does say further on in the article:

Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense to make concrete for this purpose when there are more than enough waste materials that can do the exact same job

I think combining the wind turbines themselves with a system like this could also work. If every turbine had some of these counterweights inside their towers where they could store power locally and discharge them at peak demand using much of the infrastructure that's already in place then this could improve efficiency of these installations by a decent amount.

Capt'n Midnight

Akrasia wrote: »

I think combining the wind turbines themselves with a system like this could also work. If every turbine had some of these counterweights inside their towers where they could store power locally and discharge them at peak demand using much of the infrastructure that's already in place then this could improve efficiency of these installations by a decent amount.

And let's cover the tower and blades with thin film solar panels too :pac:

To replace Turlough hill with counterweights in 100m wind turbines you'd need over 12.5 million tonnes of them.

A 6 MW wind turbine weights about 180 tonnes in total so you won't be adding much more to the top of a tower in a windy area.

Akrasia

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And let's cover the tower and blades with thin film solar panels too :pac:

To replace Turlough hill with counterweights in 100m wind turbines you'd need over 12.5 million tonnes of them.

A 6 MW wind turbine weights about 180 tonnes in total so you won't be adding much more to the top of a tower in a windy area.

Why do we need to replace Turlough hill with them? We can have both. Even a few percent efficiency gains all make a difference

Markcheese

Akrasia wrote: »

Why do we need to replace Turlough hill with them? We can have both. Even a few percent efficiency gains all make a difference

I don't think he was really suggesting replacing turlough hill with internal wind turbine weights, but more a scale comparison,

Capt'n Midnight

Markcheese wrote: »

I don't think he was really suggesting replacing turlough hill with internal wind turbine weights, but more a scale comparison,

+1

If you could pretend that a 100m, 180 tonne wind turbine could handle 100 extra tonnes , then you'd need to install it on 125,000 towers.

The London Array has 175 turbines over 100Km2
So 125,000 turbines would need 71,400Km2
The Republic is 84,421Km2, including urban areas , lakes , restricted airspace around airports etc.



Besides if you had cheap storage then Solar looks great. Cheaper distribution will happen as more of it is rolled out.

Squares are how big solar farms would need to be to provide all the electricity from Desertec. Solar panels are more efficient and a hell of a lot cheaper now so even with increased demand the area could be smaller.

Markcheese

Just watched this online... https://youtu.be/pDxegcZqx_8

Its a long enough video, but the basics are, a cheap to make,( with cheap materials,) grid level battery,
I'd seen a previous video of the same guy, when they were still developing the battery... But looks like they're re nearly at commercial production phase..

Markcheese

In saying that, that video is dated November 2016,(only just spotted that) and 2 and a half years later its still all tesla lithium ion batteries...
According to Google they're still going, went back to the drawing board and are planning on testing it with utilities in 2020...