Advanced Rail Energy Storage – Demo and Barbecue
I’m headed up to the deserts of California tomorrow to check out an important event in renewable energy history. To be specific, I’ll be on the outskirts of Tehachapi, a small town noted in song, to see a demo of the Advanced Rail Energy Storage, and enjoy a celebratory barbecue with the team there. Readers will recall that ARES CEO Jim Kelly joined me for our webinar in April of this year; in addition, I’m quite friendly with a few members of the investor team.
The pitch is simple: Think of ARES as pumped hydro without the hydro. It’s about moving masses, but it doesn’t require the presence of water, nor the hassle of the siting issues associated with corralling enormous volumes of the stuff.
Should it be listed in our list of renewable energy investment opportunities? There are numerous questions at stake, but one of them is not technical risk; this will most certainly work. The real issue, it seems to me is the value that we place on grid-scale energy storage during a window of time before ARES becomes uncompetitive due to the encroachment of high-tech storage competitors, e.g., batteries with cutting-edge design.
This idea is the biggest pile of HORSE-SHIT I ever heard of!!
I presume you’re willing to back that up with a well-reasoned position.
Absolutely!
Here you go…..
I want some of what Jimmy’s been smoking! – – – – – – – – – — – – – ****Gravity and rolling stock are the keys to Jim Kelly’s Advanced Rail Energy Storage concept. An electric motor powered by surplus electricity propels a train up a slope and when the electricity is required during periods of higher demand or low supply, the train is allowed to roll back downhill, turning the same motor, which now acts as a generator.
And like so many other energy storage concepts, the scale is big: in this case, eight miles long.
( Can we go Metric Please?) Ok so that is about 13Km )
This is the length of track planned for the Tehachapi mountains in California, which should be able to store up to 500MW of power. ** DID YOU MEAN TO SAY 500 MW-HOURS?**
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Perhaps mathematics is not your strong point Jimmy?
Remembering that even a 2% gradient is extremely steep (and dangerous if it happens to rain!) for a freight train
The vertical rise is a mere 250 Metres.
You are going to need FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND TONS OF CONCRETE!!!!
(useful calculator here… http://converter.eu/energy/…)
But wait….there’s more!
My friend Ned Ludd thought of the idea first (but it turned out to be BOLLOCKS!)
I’ve got a solution but they tell me I’m crazy!
Find a hill, Great dividing range is ideal
Get a few nice big electric locomotives, this one looks nice;
China Railways HXD1B China Railways HXD1B0001-HXD1B0500 CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive, Siemens 2009 – Electric Co’Co’ 150 t 12,874 horsepower (9,600 kW) Most powerful single frame locomotive in series production
That’s a 10 Megawatt loco…perfect.
Build a track up to the top of the hill with a nice big loop returning to a downhill track.
Another loop at the bottom to link the up/down tracks.
During times of excess supply, send train loads of rocks/scrap iron up and park them in the loop.
When power is needed send trains back down and use regenerative braking to generate power.
When there are not many trains left at the top a warning can be issued to crank up the fossil fuelled plants in plenty of time.
No need for a driver, fully automatic.
Tracks can be built anywhere that there is a suitable hill.
Steel wheels on tracks are very energy efficient.
Way out idea?
No more so than flywheels, compressed air or whacky new batteries!
User #145471 3299 posts
FB2
Whirlpool Forums Addict
reference: whrl.pl/RdtgA4
posted 2013-Feb-1, 11:16 am
Ned Ludd writes…
Way out idea?
No, they already it do it, except they replaced the rocks/scrap iron with water and the train with a pipe and a dam and called it Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity. It accounts for 99% of the bulk grid storage worldwide.
User #546387 23 posts
Ned Ludd
In the penalty box
reference: whrl.pl/RdtgGk
posted 2013-Feb-1, 11:38 am
Yes, but
Pumped hydro is not all that efficient and suitable bodies of water are not always available in the right locations.
Franklin dam proved to be unpopular.
Plenty of hills around though, or you could even build your own.
Think BIG!!
User #174836 2315 posts
bte
Whirlpool Forums Addict
reference: whrl.pl/RdtgIP
posted 2013-Feb-1, 11:49 am
Ned Ludd writes…
Find a hill, Great dividing range is ideal
I think your train will have problems making it up the hill, especially with a heavy load.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steepest_gradients_on_adhesion_railways
Metros and pure commuter railways often also allow higher gradients, up to 4%, for the same reason. High speed railways commonly allow 2.5% to 4% because the trains must be strong and have many wheels with the power to reach very high speeds. For freight trains, gradients should be as gentle as possible, preferably below 1.5%.
Let’s be ambitious and say that you can use a 2% grade. You then are allowed to take your rocks UP 1m for every 500m you travel horizontally. Cunninghams Gap (in QLD) has an elevation of 787m. Ipswich (where a lot of the power generation assests are around) has an elevation of 50m. The difference is then 737m. At a grade of 2% your horizontal track then needs to be 37km long. That’s not that long (it’s about double that from Ipswich to Cunninghams Gap by road), but it needs to be a steady grade, so what you effectively need to do is build a MASSIVE 37km earthen ramp from Ipswich to the Range. Of course you would try to follow a route that included natural hills and other features that could be included in your slope so their is less work for you to do (but then you introduce curves, which have their own problems). I have no idea how wide a base you need to have on your ramp at the end that is 700m in height. Perhaps it wouldn’t be earthen all the way, but I doubt you could build an elevated track on any height that would carry the weight without some massive engineering either.
The amount of energy you can store is also interesting. Moving a 150 tonne car (loaded with rock, steel, whatever) to a height of 737 gives a potential energy of 300kWh. Not sure how many cars you’d need to satisfy peak demands, but I believe it would be in the order of GWh’s ? To store 1GWh would then require 3333 cars (that’s a fair number, I think you’re going to need a big loop at the top).
The other factor is how quickly you can generate the power. If it’s a 10MW loco then that’s what it will both consume as an instantaneous value when it’s going up the hill and also what it will generate coming back down. So if you want to generate 350MW of capacity (the equivalent of one of the coal fired generation units at Tarong) then you would need 35 trains coming down the track at the same time. To give 1GW of capacity you need 100 trains in full flight.
Water is good because you can pump it. It doesn’t care if the grade is 90% (almost straight up) as long as your pump is powerful enough. But to use pumped hydro you need a location that has space for a massive reservoir at the top, another at the bottom, a large volume of water that you can replenish (ie. a dam on a river) and also significant height differential between the two of them. This is what we’re very short on in Australia (and the world in general).
Correction “Let’s be ambitious and say that you can use a 2% grade. You then are allowed to take your rocks UP 1m for every 500m you travel horizontally”
That should be “UP 10m for every 500m” Not my mistake, (I NEVER make mistakes) but the rest of the math(s) is correct.
Nice toy train though….very pointless….but nice.
Here’s a wacky but “possibly not impossible” idea that I thought of years ago…
Mechanical storage based on gravity.
Make a devise that can convert weight into electricity and conversely, be able to use it to lift that weight to a certain height, such as a man made mountain at more than 80% efficiency. But I doubt it’s efficiency due to all the super heavy duty gearing…