Calculating kWh for Lifting 2 Tons to 5m with a Gravity Accumulator Design

Staszek_Staszek wrote:

For the dimensions of the tower as in the article, you could fit there, for example, a concrete cylinder with a radius of 30 metres and a cylinder height of 60 metres.
The mass is almost 8000 tonnes.

I guess I got something wrong almost 170,000 m3 or a mass of 440,000 tonnes

jarek_lnx wrote:

I think there is something wrong

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Right, I corrected the calculation.
I have now come up with 174655 kWh.
Dividing by 10 kWh per house and assuming that the heating season is 100 days, it comes out ≈ 175 houses can use such an accumulator during the low RES season.
I attach the file just in case.
It is difficult to count such unusual figures for me.
By feel, I did not notice such a large error.

This is still nothing, assuming the steel can withstand 250MPa you would need a rope of over 17m2 .

For simplicity's sake, we assume there will be two blocks /one in each tower/ but these blocks can be a dozen in one and the cross-section of the rope will not be the biggest obstacle.

Here is my calculation:

1/ Energy requirement for 30,000 homes for 7 hours.

30,000 x 10 kWh/24h x 7/24 =87500 kWh = 87.5 MWh. .

2/ Mass of concrete needed to store this energy, calculated in the calculator from the link https://www.calculatoratoz.com/pl/potential-energy-calculator/Calc-280?FormulaId=280
Assuming a level difference of 200m (practically much less because the concrete block is not flat as a pancake) the mass of concrete should be 160713 tonnes. When divided into two towers, this gives a rounded "weight" of 80356 tonnes in one tower .

Staszek_Staszek wrote:

For the dimensions of the tower as in the article, for example, a concrete cylinder with a radius of 30 metres and a cylinder height of 60 metres could be accommodated there.
The mass is almost 8000 tonnes.

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Unfortunately a colleague gave an incorrect result, which he admittedly corrected but only in his next post. I calculate further, assuming a concrete density of 2.4 tonnes/m³
A mass of 80356 tonnes will therefore occupy a volume of 33482 cubic metres.

Assuming as Staszek_Staszek the radius of the cylinder is 30m then its height must be about 12m.
I apologise to anyone interested in the subject for the erroneous conclusions I drew from a colleague's miscalculation and posted here and removed after editing my post.

vodiczka wrote:

Staszek_Staszek wrote:

Staszek_Staszek wrote: For the dimensions of the tower as in the article, you could fit for example a concrete cylinder with a radius of 30 meters and a cylinder height of 60 meters.
The mass is almost 8000 tons.

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This result was underestimated by me by about 60 times.
I did not use the mouse to reach the cell where the height of the concrete cylinder was.
I corrected this later.

Of course it doesn't have to be concrete at 300 zeta per cubic metre.
Someone can pick the sand and somehow carry it up there in portions, it doesn't change the fact that they are declaring the construction of an expensive tower.

vodiczka wrote:

Or a journalist from the Olawa newspaper added one zero in the number of houses

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Journalists, in order not to be held responsible for erroneous or false information, usually make use of citing someone.

vodiczka wrote:

Or the head of Promet Plast is selling another fiction to arouse the interest of investors.

Arguably, it has a purpose.
Bosses of big companies now often announce some miracles on a stick.
E.g. Toyota's CEO says he is betting on hydrogen-powered engines.
Hydrogen has been known to mankind for a long time.
In 1671 Robert Boyle was making hydrogen and although he didn't know what it was, he found out that it burns nicely but is kind of 'disobedient'.
Hydrogen is so 'difficult' to maintain that still those who don't consume it almost immediately buy themselves electrolysers instead of hydrogen in bottles.
Of course, it is possible to produce hydrogen on an ongoing basis, even overnight, at 'gas stations'.
But this would not be a commodity but a service.
If the driver doesn't 'drive off' this fuel immediately after refuelling, it will simply escape.
This could be a solution for transport companies, however more expensive than petrol.
When forced to do so, companies will swallow the frog, and the costs of replacing tanks, engines and refuelling will be charged to them.
At the end of this chain will be the average person, who no longer has anyone to pass on his expenses to.
Of course, there is some room for such money flows; part of society has more money than it can sensibly consume.
It is such a "beautiful game" and from an economic point of view it has a right to work.

Staszek_Staszek wrote:

This result was underestimated by me by about 60 times.

I wish you had corrected in the same post where you made a mistake and I bought your result instead of counting it myself.
I corrected my post #64 and the journalist didn't get the zeros wrong.
These two towers can provide power to 30,000 homes for 7 hours.

Added after 1 [hour] 3 [minutes]:

The remaining question is how much power should these gravity batteries give out?
With an even load for 7 hours, the achievable power from the towers should be 87.5 MWh/7h = 12.5 MW but with an uneven load 15 MW or more. For comparison - the Jeziorsko Hydroelectric Power Station has two turbine sets, each with a capacity of about 2 MW. It is located on the right bank of the Warta River in the immediate vicinity of the weir and head dam of the Jeziorsko reservoir.

Further dotting the i's that is, the descent time of the concrete block assuming it will be a monolith and not an assembly of a dozen blocks in one tower.
The available fall height is 180m /180000mm/ because, with an efficiency of 80 per cent, the concrete block must be about 15m high and not, as I calculated for lossless operation, about 12m. Its fall time is 25,200 seconds if the block is to yield energy for a full 7 hours. The fall speed will be 180000mm/25200s = 7.14 mm/s, much too little to directly drive a power generator.

vodiczka wrote:

The dot over the i is the concrete fall time...

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I made these calculations - an estimate I made for "gymnastics" and I don't see the point of counting anything in detail there.
In my opinion the dot over the i will be when the planning permission is revoked.

It would be more interesting if someone counted what is necessary to erect such a structure - foundations, walls.

Staszek_Staszek wrote:

My view is that the dot over the i will be when the planning permission is revoked.

The descent time I raised in post #67 is very important and gears that adjust the descent speed of the weights to the speed of the power generators may be the biggest technical problem to solve.

jarek_lnx wrote:

It would be more interesting if someone counted what is necessary to erect such a structure - foundations, walls.

If from a technical point of view this is a possible solution then the economic question of this project remains. It is possible that the accumulation of panels, windmills and gravity storage in one place makes more than just propaganda sense. Nonetheless, I view the attempt to demonstrate that "a Pole can do it" positively, just as I view the creation of the new Unitra.
The foundations must be solid, but the walls not necessarily. The weights can be hung on the pillar structure and the walls only have a shielding role.

vodiczka wrote:

Since from a technical point of view this is a possible solution then the economic question of this project remains.

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Fact, just about economics, when lifting 1m3 of concrete to a height of 150m we will accumulate 1kWh this is already much better than the question in the first post - 5m. 1m3 of concrete is about 300zł, so after a thousand cycles it will pay for itself, the question remains how much concrete will be consumed by the supporting structure and what will be the cost of electrical equipment.

Added after 2 [minutes]: .

vodiczka wrote:

Nevertheless, I view the attempt to show ''Pole can do'' positively, as does the creation of the new Unitra.

Experimentation showing that something doesn't make sense, also makes sense

Andrzej Jeżewski explains; "The Gajowa Hill is a laboratory for future Polish energy. This is where different solutions are tested in order to select the best ones for use elsewhere. And in this we are pioneers.''

If it experimentally proves that gravity batteries don't make economic sense then your words will become flesh

jarek_lnx wrote:

An experiment demonstrating that something doesn't make sense also makes sense

If it experimentally proves that they make sense then I will change my opinion of them.
A well designed and well built gravity battery should last a minimum of 50 years, at one cycle per day this will give 18250 cycles.

I thought that if they were doing it themselves with their own money they might have found a way to make it make sense economically, yet it's business as usual, they're pulling out the cash:
https://promet-plast.pl/fundusze-unijne/

I have read that it is not just one weight in the tower, but many; "You have to manually pull up the weight, which then, by falling down for many hours, using various gears, starts the clock mechanism. In very simplistic terms, this is how the first kinetic energy storage facility of its kind in Poland, which is currently under construction in Oława Grove, is supposed to work. Only that we are not dealing with one weight, but many , placed on transport trolleys. And each such block weighs up to several tens of tonnes" .
- full article https://www.tuolawa.pl/artykul/29686,ruszyla-...itacyjnego-magazynu-energii-rusza-tez-protest

Another doubt arises . If a single block is to weigh several tens of tonnes, let's assume 80 tonnes, then there would have to be around 1,000 of these blocks in a single tower. The same number of trolleys and guides on which these trolleys will move. Will 1,000 lifts fit into an area of 2,826m², which is about 2.8m² per lift, and where is the access for inspection and maintenance?

However, I think the journalist added one zero to the number of houses that this battery could power for 7 hours.
The figure of 3,000 homes sounds more realistic than 30,000 and the energy required would then be 8.75 MWh, instead of 87.5 MWh.

jarek_lnx wrote:

and yet it is as usual, they are pulling out the cash:

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The day before yesterday I read about this and that is why I have already stopped thinking about it.
It is obvious that from an economic point of view traditional pumped storage power stations should stand, but officials
are not bound by the rules of economics.

But it's like those FREE ENERGY generators from youtube. So what if there are PV panels and wind generators from aliexpress or even from washing machines (BLDC motors). They work, they generate electricity, but there is no WOW effect. Peak-pump power plants were already in use in communist times, so there is nothing new to discover. And here there are huge mystical weights, towers etc. If we glaze it or give it plexiglass, illuminate it with RGB, paint the weights with silver or rich gold and people will come to pray to it and maybe it will even generate electricity.

The truth is that pumped storage needs a lot of terrain plus elevation difference. Typically some small mountain and we occupy the top plus the foothills (for two lakes). Probably some forest would have to be cut down, so environmentalists will probably get involved to pin down the trees, or worse, buy them out.

sigwa18 wrote:

And here great mystical weights , towers etc.. Still glaze it or give plexiglass illuminate the weights RGB paint silver or rich gold and people will come to pray to it and maybe even generate electricity.

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It is possible that school trips but also other tourists will pass through, just as they come to Świebodzin.
The towers when they gather energy will generate it, there is no deception here. The fraud consists in remaining silent about the time it will take for the investment in the gravitational battery to pay off, if it pays off at all, vide the Vistula Spit diversion.

so something more tangible:

https://www.energyvault.com/projects/cn-rudong

They wrote that

Quote:

...The Rudong and Zhangye projects have been designated as new energy storage demonstration pilot projects by China's National Energy Administration...

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2024/03/07/energy...scale-gravity-energy-storage-system-in-china/
So I understand that the government since they appointed it probably paid for it.
However I guess they want to make money out of it though because:

Quote:

...In February, Energy Vault signed a 10-year agreement to deploy its energy storage tech across the 16 nations of the Southern African Development Community region.

Quote:

...In February, Energy Vault signed a 10-year agreement to deploy its energy storage technology across 16 countries in southern Africa...

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meaning they intend to sell the technology.

Staszek_Staszek wrote:

they intend to sell the technology.

Rather, they intend to make African countries bamboozled for 10 years. With the high level of corruption there, this is achievable.