Here’s a viable, arguably better alternative to pumped storage, and rolling out now.
Apologies for being a bit redundant considering Wallace’s post above. But unlike a lot of hyped talk, this system is being employed now, clearly the economics are there.
And this technology also seems to be well on the progression to real application, economic grid storage, based on molten calcium and magnesium, very common and economic elements.
Unfortunately it has no bearing on EVs, but these developments could fundamentally change energy generation and use.
My thing for generating large quantities of electricity is – the ocean tides. It is being done but not to the extent it could be.
As for dams on the rivers— we have 4 dams on one river in our township. They were built in the early 1900s to furnish electricity for the trolleys in Green Bay. They are still in operation and have been taken over by the big power company. Their greatest value now is the back waters for recreation which brings in tourists. Tomc
Those tower are interesting because about a decade ago now there was a company here trying to develop that system and also trying to develop compressed air storage somehow the two systems worked together I really only got second hand information from a friend who worked there. The company had alot of grant money but ran into issues related to safety regulations it turns out when you suspend very large masses high in the air the damage they can do in a free fall is amazing. In the end the safety systems where adding too many frictional losses to make their design work. I hadn’t heard of anyone else implementing that solution on a grid scale.
Tom the best way to deal with renewable energy and storage is to take those hydro dams we already have and not use them for base load power but only use them when the renewable energy is low. Ofcourse there are other flow issues with most dams in the USA because the down stream contracts on the water ussage. But in someone areas switching from ff heated steam turbines to wind and solar is removing a big demand on water where supply is limited.
Hydro plants are not base load.
You can adjust them fairly quick.
I think about 15 minutes of my memory serves was how fast the power output could be turned up or down and stabilized.
A steam plant is different…
Takes hours to increase and decrease power levels and stabilize.
Its not so easy to turn them into pump storage.
That means completely new turbines.
True but if you look at most hydro dams they are uses as a 24/7 power supply or if you look at some of them we limit the dams based on tourism. My point is simply that we can do much better by using the hydro as a filler when wind and solar are out. That is some of the smart grid technology.
In hydro generation. I could start the unit starting sequence and have it on line and loaded up to 100 megawatts in 5 mins. I could start more than one unit at a time. It might take me a couple of minutes longer doing it all manual start up and not on the auto mode. If we had a trip on the transmission lines. Three operators standing at the bench board could start and synchronize all 10 units to the three transmission 1, 2 and 3 lines faster than the auto mode could do it. We would let the load controller bring the units up to full load in that type of scenario unless told by the dispatcher to do it differently. When you have 150,000 cubic feet per second of river water inflow to the hydro plant. And you are at full elevation for your pool behind the dam, water will start going over you spillway tainter gates in minutes. The gates are designed for water to go under them not over the top, so you have to open the gates if you can not pass the water through the generator unit turbines. I can said this, I do not miss those line trip outages for one minute. I glad I put my time in and now I’m doing other important things.
HWWT, SWEM, DOW.
Bob
Could they issue hard hats? 
Wouldn’t a safety perimeter fence be good enough to keep people out of the danger zone?
This is our current situation. Purple is nuclear and blue is hydro. (Scroll down to the production diagram)
The amount of energy they where looking at with grid scale storage was on the order of earthquake damage from the suspended mass or bomb explosion for the compressed air. So I guess it you wanted to fence off a few hundred miles maybe but that seemed cost prohibited around here.
JO; I have read that in Europe you have plants that can recycle the waste from neuclear plants. As I understand the US jumped into plants to generate electricity, but the “waste” is moved around and stashed in veryious locations. TomC
Tom in the USA the nuclear waste is sitting on site in spend fuel pools even after the reactors are decommissioned. It is Reagon era policy which bans the transport of spent fuel due to the risk of hijack in transport. It was passed at the same time we signed the nuclear weapons treaty with Russia where the USA bough the weapons grade uranium from Russia and used it in our reactors as part of the treaty verification process.
I would wonder about the damage potential. I suspect the energy in an earthquake is orders of magnitude greater than one of those towers coming down in an instant. The most likely (though unlikely) scenario is a hoist failing and a block coming down. I’m unfamiliar with the notion of compressed air in such a system, so won’t comment, except to say I’m looking forward to this design being implemented.
Gary here in the granite state our granite bedrock will transmit a shocked over a very large area. I forgot the mass they where working with but it was amazing how much mass you actually have to suspend when your taking about mega watts of storage. If someone drives a well with a old well pounding machine here instead of drilling it you can feel the vibration for about a mile. My brother had his well put in that way and got complaints from neighbors he didn’t know he had.
I think the compressed air system was both a fast release energy system to spin a turbine and a safety breaking system for the mass in case of cable failure. All I know about the project is second hand from a friend who worked there at the time doing some of the safety reviews.
I’m no engineer, but a bed of gravel or similar in the fall zone should take the shock out of even a heavy impact. Or the blocks themselves could be engineered with crumple zones.
I recall it being said the energy release of each of the world trade center towers collapsing was equivalent to a small atomic bomb. But being released over seconds instead of a microsecond caused minimal damage nearby. New York sits on bedrock too.
Interesting technology anyways.
I don’t know about recycling, but this is a quote from the EU commission’s website.
“Progress has been made in safely disposing of very low level and low level waste in the EU, and so far Finland, France and Sweden have selected sites for the deep geological disposal of intermediate and high level waste from civilian facilities. It is likely that they will open the first repositories for these kinds of waste between 2022 and 2030.”
The Swedish site is only 100 miles from here, in Östhammar. Investigations have been going on since 2011 and high level waste is supposed to be inclosed in copper capsules and buried deep down in the granite bedrock.
What’s delaying the decision is that the local communal authority has veto. A local referendum was going to take place earlier this year but was postponed.
I believe much of the spent first generation reactor fuel can be used in another reactor design, as is done in France and Japan. The process is frowned upon though, because though it recovers far more energy and should reduce waste to a degree, it produces plutonium, leaving open possibilities of weapons manufacturing.
Also plutonium is the worst kind, with a half-life of millions of years.
Glaciers and erosion have spread it all around the world from natural deposits anyways. We don’t live in a radiation free world.
I’m more interested in reasonable planning and eventual storage when the material is no use.
Think of the environmental risks from nuclear weapons stockpiles and reactors if there was a civilization collapse…