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Nevada Startup Stores Energy With Trains (fortune.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the railroad-to-nowhere dept.

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."

3 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Innovation in Nevada by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."

    And the existence of Las Vegas is evidence for Nevada as a leading region for innovations in ways to needlessly waste energy and resources.

  2. Re:The question is whether the solution is scalabl by hackertourist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's an invention that can help with that. You may have heard of it, it's called "brakes".

  3. Re:When I was a kid... by mark_reh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is sort of like storing energy in a vacuum vs a pressurized vessel. The energy stored in a vacuum is very limited (you can only go to zero pressure), while you can make a pressure vessel that can store a lot more energy in the same volume because the pressure is unlimited up to the point of condensing the gas.

    There's a practical limit to how cold you can make things, and therefore the energy you can store that way, but you can get a lot of things super hot (liquid sodium, for example) and store much more energy in the same volume.

    Maximizing energy/volume is what it's all about economically, because cost is directly proportional to volume.