Nevada Startup Stores Energy With Trains (fortune.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Nevada's Bureau of Land Management has granted a land lease to a $55 million project by Advanced Rail Energy Storage, which "proposes to use excess off-peak energy to push a heavily-loaded train up a grade," according to Fortune. "Then, when the grid needs that energy back, the cars will be rolled back down the slope...that return trip will generate energy and put it back on the grid."

The company claims its solution is about 50% cheaper than other storage technologies, according to Fortune, and boasts an 80% efficency in energy reclamation, "similar to or slightly above typical hydro-storage efficiency." Citing Tesla's factory, the magazine callsthe project "further evidence for Nevadaâ(TM)s emergence as a leading region for innovative transportation and energy projects."

Comments

Re: Or get a generator that works 24x7

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the issue. The problem is that demand is highest during the day, and you end up with unused power at night. That's especially true during the summer. You still generate the energy at night but you waste some of it when it's not needed. In the case of wind, in some places the winds tend to be stronger at night. If your turbines are high enough in the central US, that's absolutely true. That's probably somewhat true out west, too. The goal is to store the energy generated at night so it can be used during the day. Otherwise you have to build more of those generators that work 24x7 to meet peak demand, and it costs everyone more money.

Electric Mountain, Wales

[mccalli]

Sounds like a variant of Electric Mountain in the UK. The same thing is done, only instead of moving trains up the hill they move water instead. There's more in the Wikipedia article - essentially though, this idea works fine.

Re:Mechanical storage

[drinkypoo]

There are some very interesting things going on with solar power as well, but apparently humans simply love shoving, swinging, or spinning insanely heavy shit around as an alternative.

We're currently talking about power Storage, which makes solar more viable. We're not talking about power generation. #notevenwrong

Re:Mechanical storage

[Deadstick]

There are some very interesting things going on with solar power as well, but apparently humans simply love shoving, swinging, or spinning insanely heavy shit around as an alternative.

...or perhaps they simply comprehend the distinction between generation and storage.

Re:Mechanical storage

[necro81]

Beacon Power tried to commercialize that concept 5-10 years ago. Their flywheels were cylinders of spun carbon fiber, in vacuum chambers, and levitated on magnetic bearings. These were sunk into concrete silos - in case any one of them flew apart. The technology was used not so much for bulk storage, but rather for peak-shaving and arbitrage.

The company went bankrupt a couple of years ago after building their first 20 MW storage plant. They're now owned by a private equity firm and making another go of it, so there's hope yet.

Re:The question is whether the solution is scalabl

[hackertourist]

Their brochure has more info on their proposed solution. 2 rail yards, 8 miles apart, 70 4-car trains weighing 1000 tons each, capacity 2 MWh per train. Each train is about 60 m long and ~3 m wide. Peak capacity 333 MW.
Rail cars weigh 240 tons, mostly concrete. A block of concrete 15*2.5*3 m weighs that much.

The least amount of energy you can store is achieved by parking one train somewhere up the slope. Want to store 200 kWh? Drive 0.8 miles.

800giga joules per train = 1 las vegas minute.

[goombah99]

Let's see now.
suppose they have oversized axles so we'll estimate 200 metric tonnes per car, then a 2000 meter mountain difference, and 100 cars long. we'll round g off to 10.

E= mgh = 200*200E3*2000*10 = 800E9

If they could release that in 1 hour then they could have 200 megawattHr

I found an old estimate that by 2015 Las vegas would need 10,000 megawatts of power on a summer day. Thus 50 trains could power it for an hour.

Or roughtly speaking 1 train would power las vegas for 1 minute