Advanced Rail Energy Storage
About a year ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to a meeting of the executive team of ARES, Advanced Rail Energy Storage, a company with a unique concept that competes against pumped hydro. I hope you’ll check out the website; it tells the story very well, and offers two very solid videos.
ARES most definitely offers advances over its competition, largely, that it doesn’t require water, which is scarce in parts of the world in which the demand for storage is the greatest, e.g., the deserts of the Southwestern US. Having said that:
1) Insofar as the concept embraces materials and technologies that are fairly commonplace, the cost per Watt, as well as the cost per Watt-hour, will not come down over time to keep pace with higher-tech solutions, e.g., batteries.
2) I don’t have my wits wrapped around the business elements of energy storage as they exist now, let alone how they may exist in the future. In particular, storage benefits all stakeholders: generation, transmission, distribution, and rate-payer. I suppose that’s a good thing. But who’s going to pay for it? The discussion, historically, has been a tricky one.
In any case, I know and respect a number of the people involved here, and I wish them well. If anyone’s interested in speaking with them, please let me know.
That’s an interesting concept; whether it will prove practical has yet to be determined. At least it would be easy to calculate the required weights of the rail cars and how much they have to be raised to store specified amounts of potential energy. To maximize their weight, the rail cars could be loaded with depleted uranium; that’s heavier than lead.
Basically, it uses the same concept that in olden times, powered clocks. Weights were attached to a cord which was wrapped around a drum that drove the clock mechanism. When the weights reached the bottom, they were manually cranked up.
As soon as I heard the words rail tracks I understood the concept. My biggest concern is that it would require a LARGE area, even more so than hydraulic storage. The most efficient area use I could imagine would be a giant corkscrew with a lift up the center but the labor cost for such an endeavor would be huge. So logically you would install it somewhere you have a mountain you aren’t using that “vista nazi’s” aren’t going to scream about. Which means also coupling it with a wind farm as that is the best place to find wind energy.
I like it. Seems like a good idea. I have actually considered building something similar as I remember the clock mechanisms I saw in lighthouses to turn the lens.
The ARES mass weight is about 2X that of Pumped-Storage Hydro and their effective head is 3X, so they are getting about a 6X area reduction per cubic foot of mass over hydraulic storage. Their 668MW facility example has a 400′ wide upper and lower storage yard from which they garner 8 hours of discharge duration at continuous rated power. Their preferred siting is desert alluvial fans below mountain/ridge tops but adjacent to wind and solar resources. I believe it is safe to say they are going after the transmission upgrade deferral and renewables integration market. They have the former head of T&D from Edison as their CEO which is interesting.
In a word……… BOLLOCKS!
I presume you’re willing to back that up with a well-reasoned position.