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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."

15 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. When I was a kid... by 110010001000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When I was a kid I always wondered by we couldn't store the cold air in boxes in the winter and then use it in the summer to cool us off. I was a dumb kid.

    1. Re: When I was a kid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Not necessarily a bad idea. How about this? A lot of your excess wind power during the summer comes at night when it's cool, provided your turbines are tall enough. In many places the winds are stronger during the winter. That's definitely true in the central United States. What if you used that energy to compress air and store it? Then let it reach temperature equilibrium with its surroundings? Then uncompress the air and circulate it when it's hot. The ideal gas law dictates that it will cool as it's depressurized. Basically it's like running your air conditioner when it's cool and storing the cool air for when you need it.

    2. Re:When I was a kid... by necro81 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, storing cold is an entirely viable strategy. Back in the 1800s, ice would be harvested from frozen ponds in New England, then packed in sawdust and stored in warehouses. That ice was later shipped to many place - the Carribean, the American West, even to India. Keeping ice cold and frozen is just a matter of proper insulation.

      More recently, there are plenty of sizeable buildings that use ice storage as part of their HVAC system. During the night, when ambient temperatures are colder, building loads are minimized, and electricity is cheap, power is used to create tons of ice. The ice is then used to cool the building the following day.

    3. Re:When I was a kid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      We actually store truckloads of snow every winter in Finland, cover it with sawdust and wood chippings and then use it for early cross-country skiing in the fall. About half of the snow has melted during the summer.

    4. Re:When I was a kid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Its not completely idiotic, in fact I think they do something similar in Japan. Some buildings have concrete storage boxes burred underground where during winter snow is dumped. When summer rolls around the snow is used to cool the building for a few months out of the summer until the snow melts. It doesn't completely cover the cooling requirements but it does take a big bite out of it and it also gives them a place to shove some of their snow that's out of the way.

    5. Re:When I was a kid... by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are air conditioning systems that make ice during off peak electricity hours and then use that ice to cool air during the peak hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Personally I wish more places would use ground source heat pumps (GSHP) though I understand that they don't because the systems are expensive. That's why I don't have one. When it came to replace my furnace and A/C last year I looked into a GSHP and it was about 5 times the price of a pretty good natural gas furnace (98%+ efficient) and a SEER 16 A/C. Instead of storing the cold you are storing the heat. In the summer a normal central A/C just dumps the heat into the air and gets less efficient the hotter it is. A GSHP will transfer the heat into the ground where it is kept and it doesn't matter how warm it is outside. Then in the winter the GSHP will take the heat that was saved in the summer, plus some of the heat that was already there, and transfer it back into the building to warm it up.

    6. Re:When I was a kid... by RicktheBrick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When I go to grocery store to pick up soda, I am always amazed by the fact that the soda is room temperature. More than half of the year the soda could be cold just by drawing in some of the cold air that exist all the time for 6 months here in Michigan. I am amazed by the mountains of snow that are created in every parking lot. The snow will be there until the sun melts them. Yet there are a huge amount of freezers using electricity to keep food cool. The same goes for the refrigerator in my home. I have forced air gas furnace. It has a fan to distribute the air. All it would need is a way to draw in outside air in the cool summer nights here in Michigan to cool down my house. It would have to be smart enough to know when the outside air is cool enough to cool down the house. Take today for instance the sun will heat up my attic to about 85 degrees and the house to around 75 degrees. My bedroom will remain in the 70's well after the time I wish to sleep making it difficult to get to sleep. A few hours ago it was in the upper 40's or lower 50's but none of the cold air was used to cool down anything that I could use during the day.

    7. Re:When I was a kid... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm amazed that western vending machines usually only serve hot OR cold drinks, not bother. Most Japanese machines have both, because if you are going to generate heat cooling one lot you might as well use it to heat another lot. The coffee-in-a-can is surprisingly good, and the warm green tea is passable.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re:Mechanical storage by Troyusrex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are some very interesting things going on with storing mechanical energy using Flywheels. It isn't quite the same concept but takes a lot less space than moving a large train uphill.

  3. Re:Mechanical storage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I recall reading about a huge cutting/shredding blade that weighed (a wild guess) between 80-200 metric tons and took over 8 hours to stop when it was shut down for maintenance. I imagine flywheels could indeed be a space-conserving and *extremely simple* solution for storing energy when there's abundant energy laying around the grids.

    The output of a flywheel generator could be also easily evened out using gears and/or variable frequency drives. When the flywheel gradually starts losing speed, the gears and VFD's guarantee an even output right up until the flywheel stops. The best part is that the energy output of a flywheel based energy storage method is very reliable and output can easily be calculated based on the achieved RPM's, mass and historical data.

    The only fear I have is if such a multiton monster ever gets lose and goes on a wild rampage out the walls... :-)

  4. Necessity vs invention by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To be fair... it does make some sense that these two things would chase each other around in circles.

    I think you are correct. Necessity is the mother of invention and apparently invention can be the mother of necessity too. The amount of wasted human effort involved in making a major metropolis in the middle of a desert in a location with zero natural resources to justify its existence is astonishing. Same thing applies to Phoenix. Great examples of doing something because we can without stopping to wonder if we should.

    1. Re:Necessity vs invention by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Interesting

      One of the original natural resources of Phoenix was pollen free air - invaluable for people with allergies. Ironically, the successful development of Phoenix, largely based on this resource, has destroyed the resource just as surely as a coal mining town mines out a seam - get enough people in a city and they're sure to plant grass and flowers in their yards.

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

    ARES quotes an energy efficiency of 80% which would outperform pumped water storage (70%), so that's pretty good.

    Converting CO2 into carbon is being worked on, but no large-scale efficient process has been found yet.

  6. Re: why by easyTree · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sisyphean Railways

    --
    Requiem for the American Dream
  7. Re:why by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 5, Interesting

    why didn't I think of this????

    Because it’s been done before. The Virginian railroad used to haul coal down the hills of Virginia; it was electrified, and the engines used regenerative braking. When they slowed down, the electric motors turned into generators and sent back power through the wire. When one fully-loaded train was going downhill, it provided enough power to get two unloaded trains up the hill; the net energy consumption was pretty negligible