The advantage to having useful power generation and storage at home is that it will keep working when your local utility lets you down. A fact very much in the thoughts of Austin residents last week, when the city went a week without potable water. A solar roof and Tesla PowerWall will work, but there must be a way to do better.
So you know nothing of mechanical engineering then. But you do have "engineer disease": the belief that expertise in one field magically grants you expertise in another.
Hydraulic presses have been used for a long time. The hydraulics are used for exerting force not storing energy.
Yes, this one works differently than the one you saw once walking to chem lab.
Yes, I read the pdf you linked; no, I did not see anything about using liquid to store energy.
The PDF you "read" says:
The press force is generated by a hydro-pneumatic pressure system consisting of four pre-filler bottles, two horizontal reciprocating pumps driven by 1,500 H.P. motors, and four forged alloy steel pressure accumulator bottles.
They aren't storing energy using liquid, obviously, which is why it's a hydro-pneumatic pressure system. You can find footage on YouTube of this beast operating. It pumps up pressure for some time before it's ready. It will use normal hydraulics to fast-fill the cylinders until first contact with the workpiece, then add stored power for the actual pressing.
It's an amazing piece of 50s tech, rebuilt in 74 with for very precise operation. If you've flown in a Boeing airliner, you've sat near to an aluminum frame piece forged by one of these presses.
Fun fact:
The hydro-pneumatic pressure system contains four accumulator bottles maintaining a pressure of 4,500 pounds per square inch. Each pressure bottle was forged in one piece by Mesta from a 195 ton alloy steel ingot.
Just the forging done to create this press was freaking impressive. It also shows what's involved in making a safe way to store 4500 PSI if you don't have a cavern handy.
Now you just need a process for converting electricity into gasoline, and your energy storage is complete.
There was a DOE research program to do something like that (with several patents owned by the US government, so effectively open) using hydrogen. Hydrogen storage in metal hydrides has remarkable energy density, not too far from gasoline. The plan was to use very small, pump-able spheres, so you could drain/fill your tank with very similar infrastructure to gas.
Steam hydrolysis is technically over 100% efficient if you're starting with waste steam from power generation (it reclaims some of the heat of fusion of steam, which would otherwise be wasted), so this approach to energy storage has no efficiency loss as long as the "filling" is co-located with power generation.
Hopefully some smart guy will build the 90% efficient solar cell,
They do keep getting better. Only a matter of time now before solar becomes the cheapest solution for electrical power generation. Not that useful for blast furnaces and the like, but we could probably live with that (IIRC, "primary thermal" is around 20% of power consumption).
It would be cool to find an energy storage solution that was great at the house level, not just at the industrial level. Sadly, this isn't that. Making use of caverns where the rock is strong enough is very cool, where you can do it, but is clearly something for power companies to do, not homeowners.
You're talking about a liquid under pressure. Pressurize liquids store very little energy, because they are largely uncompressable.
You might find it informative to read about the biggest presses. The 1500 HP motors don't make nearly enough power to operate the press directly: they accumulate the energy in pressure accumulator bottles until there's enough in storage to operate the press once. it's a "hydro-pneumatic" system.
It's the only example I can think of where energy is routinely stored and discharged at thousands of PSI, and safely. Scuba tanks store air at a reasonable fraction of that pressure, but they aren't used for power (so limited fill/discharge rate) and they do blow up from time to time.
Huh? We're talking about energy storage, not machine shop tools.
When considering safety, it's always good to look to people who have being doing it safely for decades, and see what's involved. The big presses have to store energy at very high PSI in order to operate. Their inspection procedures are non-trivial. Not very practical if you don't have the right kind of rock to use for storing vast quantities of energy.
And of course it's somewhat dangerous (a problem with most dense energy storage). At least stored underground it won't kill people if it fractures (if planned right). Seems like another "awesome where it works" plan, much like pumping water up hill is darn good if you have an abundance of water, and a hill.
I'd be nervous, though, about any storage in steel containers as that goes very bad when it goes (a few hundred PSI is one thing, but a few thousand PSI is another). I know the biggest presses store power and operate at 4000+ PSI, but they're routinely checked for flaws (the US has 2 50,000 ton presses that make e.g. most large or military aircraft structural elements, one was down for several years when stress fractures were discovered).
That's a great idea IMO. After some number of mod points being spent, any future mods could be changed to "Interesting", since clearly the post would be. Of course, yo'd need some escape for the Slashdot Janitors to actually mod things down, to prevent trolls upmodding GNAA posts, but as long as that was visible I think people would be OK with it.
Say what you will about Reddit's voting system, but being able to vote down flamebait is essential to a functioning conversation. The main issue there is when someone makes a witty remark which de-rails the serious conversation.
"Please protect me from any ideas I disagree with. Such hate speech triggers me, and I need a safe space". Hey, if all you want is NPC scripts agreeing with your ideas constantly, you might tell Twitter to stop blocking those guys.
Twitter already has the ability to block people you don't want to hear from, and to follow people you do want to hear from. People already abuse that with "block lists" to allow others to think for them, and block people pre-emptively. Seems any set of tools will devolve into tribalism.
Ahh, the old "red state inbred racists are too dumb to even see their own self-interest" argument. Lies believed by fools. I'm sure you have an idea of an aristocracy of smart people, perhaps scientists, who should rule, since people can't be trusted with democracy.
The words "conservative" and "liberal" have lost all meaning in politics. However, outside of politics, "conservative" does indeed mean "skeptical of change".
Also nobody is in favor of small government when it suits them.
I'm sure none of your fiends are. However, there are indeed people who want minimal government. There are indeed people who think beyond "how can I get the biggest government check possible". I'm sorry you don't know any, but not surprised.
What you're really in for is "small enough to drown in a bathtub" government. In other words, small, local governments that can be pushed around by large power organizations.
Ahh, the old "if you don't embrace totalitarian government, you want to be ruled by corporations" argument. Lies believed by fools.
VR is good for few games, much better for virtual exploration.
Shooters might work in VR but fighting games would need full mocap on you and have to generate the frame rules in real time according to what you do and that would probably suck. But if you don't do that you are restricted to a movelist. That's fine for a controller but confusing and disconnected from what you are doing to get it to register the right input. I already tried mocap Tekken Tag and it's horrible. Sticking your left leg and arm out as far as they go to register a 1+3 throw input is dumb as hell.
What VR is ideal for is mysteries. With a fully explorable area, but limited controls, you could do a great detective game. And let's not forget mysteries are historically the best selling books of all time, far more than adventure and genre fiction.
Current games are tuned to current controls. That's no surprise. But VR won't succeed until it escapes that history, and focuses on new genres that are tuned to the high immersion/low control of VR. Heck, RPGs could be freaking amazing, just move away from sword fighting. Exploration, diplomacy and intrigue, and magic-based combat could all work really well, whule anything involving quick movement or contact would suck. Seems like pretty wide boundaries to work within.
For me it was an issue with most games. Just turning my head would do it, eventually. The nausea would slowly build up over 30 minutes, then stick with me for hours after I stopped. Motion I controlled with a controller, like a normal video game, didn't cause me issues. Very disappointing.
Very immersive, though. Seems the tech VR is missing is a great anti-nausea drug.
My 2 top comments in this story have each seen 10+ mod points expended on them, and they're still in rapid motion. And they're both fairly bland. Slashdot has been overtaken by tribalism, with modding going entirely by "are you fer em or agin em". That's exactly what destroyed Digg, and I'm not sure how much life Slashdot has left in it.
Heck, I saw posts downmodded yesterday for suggesting such notions as "the rich use their money to become richer, they don't just sit on it" and "healthcare is really expensive". Those are almost progressive talking points, but they're not exactly progressive talking points, so mods were triggered.
Yup, very poor choice of hosting providers. If only nearlyfreespeech.net was able to host real internet services, but they're pretty focused on the little guy.
No, the backlash is not for hosting that guy. He was on Twitter and Facebook too. No backlash there. The backlash is for not banning conservative speech in general. But that's just an excuse, really.
The is the Silicon Valley Cabal using this shooting as an excuse to destroy the competition - pure business. Gab was starting to get actual traction as a competitor, and there's nothing a monopoly hates more than a competitor!
No, "lack of change" is not the point of conservatism. "Carefully evaluating change before jumping in" is the point of conservatism. This is why all most engineers are conservative engineers, but few good salesmen are.
Meanwhile the left can't get any tracking on Medicare for All, even though a majority of Republicans support it (let alone Democrats).
Right, because most Republicans are not conservative in the political sense (small government). However, never confuse what politicians say they support with what they actually do to support their big donors.
Political views are something you choose, so they can never be a protected category.
"Protected category" is a legal construct, and includes whatever arbitrary groups the law is written to include. California includes political affiliation as a protected category.
Slashdot Mirror
The advantage to having useful power generation and storage at home is that it will keep working when your local utility lets you down. A fact very much in the thoughts of Austin residents last week, when the city went a week without potable water. A solar roof and Tesla PowerWall will work, but there must be a way to do better.
Chemical engineer here.
So you know nothing of mechanical engineering then. But you do have "engineer disease": the belief that expertise in one field magically grants you expertise in another.
Hydraulic presses have been used for a long time. The hydraulics are used for exerting force not storing energy.
Yes, this one works differently than the one you saw once walking to chem lab.
Yes, I read the pdf you linked; no, I did not see anything about using liquid to store energy.
The PDF you "read" says:
The press force is generated by a hydro-pneumatic pressure system
consisting of four pre-filler bottles, two horizontal reciprocating pumps
driven by 1,500 H.P. motors, and four forged alloy steel pressure
accumulator bottles.
They aren't storing energy using liquid, obviously, which is why it's a hydro-pneumatic pressure system. You can find footage on YouTube of this beast operating. It pumps up pressure for some time before it's ready. It will use normal hydraulics to fast-fill the cylinders until first contact with the workpiece, then add stored power for the actual pressing.
It's an amazing piece of 50s tech, rebuilt in 74 with for very precise operation. If you've flown in a Boeing airliner, you've sat near to an aluminum frame piece forged by one of these presses.
Fun fact:
The hydro-pneumatic pressure system contains four accumulator
bottles maintaining a pressure of 4,500 pounds per square inch.
Each pressure bottle was forged in one piece by Mesta from a
195 ton alloy steel ingot.
Just the forging done to create this press was freaking impressive. It also shows what's involved in making a safe way to store 4500 PSI if you don't have a cavern handy.
Now you just need a process for converting electricity into gasoline, and your energy storage is complete.
There was a DOE research program to do something like that (with several patents owned by the US government, so effectively open) using hydrogen. Hydrogen storage in metal hydrides has remarkable energy density, not too far from gasoline. The plan was to use very small, pump-able spheres, so you could drain/fill your tank with very similar infrastructure to gas.
Steam hydrolysis is technically over 100% efficient if you're starting with waste steam from power generation (it reclaims some of the heat of fusion of steam, which would otherwise be wasted), so this approach to energy storage has no efficiency loss as long as the "filling" is co-located with power generation.
I see you have a romantic admirer stalking you on Slashdot now. How cute. Is he a TSLA short or something?
Hopefully some smart guy will build the 90% efficient solar cell,
They do keep getting better. Only a matter of time now before solar becomes the cheapest solution for electrical power generation. Not that useful for blast furnaces and the like, but we could probably live with that (IIRC, "primary thermal" is around 20% of power consumption).
It would be cool to find an energy storage solution that was great at the house level, not just at the industrial level. Sadly, this isn't that. Making use of caverns where the rock is strong enough is very cool, where you can do it, but is clearly something for power companies to do, not homeowners.
You're talking about a liquid under pressure. Pressurize liquids store very little energy, because they are largely uncompressable.
You might find it informative to read about the biggest presses. The 1500 HP motors don't make nearly enough power to operate the press directly: they accumulate the energy in pressure accumulator bottles until there's enough in storage to operate the press once. it's a "hydro-pneumatic" system.
It's the only example I can think of where energy is routinely stored and discharged at thousands of PSI, and safely. Scuba tanks store air at a reasonable fraction of that pressure, but they aren't used for power (so limited fill/discharge rate) and they do blow up from time to time.
Huh? We're talking about energy storage, not machine shop tools.
When considering safety, it's always good to look to people who have being doing it safely for decades, and see what's involved. The big presses have to store energy at very high PSI in order to operate. Their inspection procedures are non-trivial. Not very practical if you don't have the right kind of rock to use for storing vast quantities of energy.
And of course it's somewhat dangerous (a problem with most dense energy storage). At least stored underground it won't kill people if it fractures (if planned right). Seems like another "awesome where it works" plan, much like pumping water up hill is darn good if you have an abundance of water, and a hill.
I'd be nervous, though, about any storage in steel containers as that goes very bad when it goes (a few hundred PSI is one thing, but a few thousand PSI is another). I know the biggest presses store power and operate at 4000+ PSI, but they're routinely checked for flaws (the US has 2 50,000 ton presses that make e.g. most large or military aircraft structural elements, one was down for several years when stress fractures were discovered).
That's a great idea IMO. After some number of mod points being spent, any future mods could be changed to "Interesting", since clearly the post would be. Of course, yo'd need some escape for the Slashdot Janitors to actually mod things down, to prevent trolls upmodding GNAA posts, but as long as that was visible I think people would be OK with it.
Your the one who was just overtly antisemitic. Or are you clinging to the lie that one can be anti-Israel without being anti-Jew? Foolish.
Me too!
Say what you will about Reddit's voting system, but being able to vote down flamebait is essential to a functioning conversation. The main issue there is when someone makes a witty remark which de-rails the serious conversation.
"Please protect me from any ideas I disagree with. Such hate speech triggers me, and I need a safe space". Hey, if all you want is NPC scripts agreeing with your ideas constantly, you might tell Twitter to stop blocking those guys.
Twitter already has the ability to block people you don't want to hear from, and to follow people you do want to hear from. People already abuse that with "block lists" to allow others to think for them, and block people pre-emptively. Seems any set of tools will devolve into tribalism.
Ahh, the old "red state inbred racists are too dumb to even see their own self-interest" argument. Lies believed by fools. I'm sure you have an idea of an aristocracy of smart people, perhaps scientists, who should rule, since people can't be trusted with democracy.
The words "conservative" and "liberal" have lost all meaning in politics. However, outside of politics, "conservative" does indeed mean "skeptical of change".
Also nobody is in favor of small government when it suits them.
I'm sure none of your fiends are. However, there are indeed people who want minimal government. There are indeed people who think beyond "how can I get the biggest government check possible". I'm sorry you don't know any, but not surprised.
What you're really in for is "small enough to drown in a bathtub" government. In other words, small, local governments that can be pushed around by large power organizations.
Ahh, the old "if you don't embrace totalitarian government, you want to be ruled by corporations" argument. Lies believed by fools.
Trump is the most pro-Israel president we've had in quite some time. Of course that sparks reaction.
Yes, but how is that Gab's fault and not Twitter's or Facebook's? He's on every social media platform.
VR is good for few games, much better for virtual exploration.
Shooters might work in VR but fighting games would need full mocap on you and have to generate the frame rules in real time according to what you do and that would probably suck. But if you don't do that you are restricted to a movelist. That's fine for a controller but confusing and disconnected from what you are doing to get it to register the right input. I already tried mocap Tekken Tag and it's horrible. Sticking your left leg and arm out as far as they go to register a 1+3 throw input is dumb as hell.
What VR is ideal for is mysteries. With a fully explorable area, but limited controls, you could do a great detective game. And let's not forget mysteries are historically the best selling books of all time, far more than adventure and genre fiction.
Current games are tuned to current controls. That's no surprise. But VR won't succeed until it escapes that history, and focuses on new genres that are tuned to the high immersion/low control of VR. Heck, RPGs could be freaking amazing, just move away from sword fighting. Exploration, diplomacy and intrigue, and magic-based combat could all work really well, whule anything involving quick movement or contact would suck. Seems like pretty wide boundaries to work within.
For me it was an issue with most games. Just turning my head would do it, eventually. The nausea would slowly build up over 30 minutes, then stick with me for hours after I stopped. Motion I controlled with a controller, like a normal video game, didn't cause me issues. Very disappointing.
Very immersive, though. Seems the tech VR is missing is a great anti-nausea drug.
My 2 top comments in this story have each seen 10+ mod points expended on them, and they're still in rapid motion. And they're both fairly bland. Slashdot has been overtaken by tribalism, with modding going entirely by "are you fer em or agin em". That's exactly what destroyed Digg, and I'm not sure how much life Slashdot has left in it.
Heck, I saw posts downmodded yesterday for suggesting such notions as "the rich use their money to become richer, they don't just sit on it" and "healthcare is really expensive". Those are almost progressive talking points, but they're not exactly progressive talking points, so mods were triggered.
Using a word that's only used in a certain community is a pretty good reason to believe you have spent time in that community.
OK, let me use small words. He joined that group because he was crazy; the group did not make him crazy.
Yup, very poor choice of hosting providers. If only nearlyfreespeech.net was able to host real internet services, but they're pretty focused on the little guy.
No, the backlash is not for hosting that guy. He was on Twitter and Facebook too. No backlash there. The backlash is for not banning conservative speech in general. But that's just an excuse, really.
The is the Silicon Valley Cabal using this shooting as an excuse to destroy the competition - pure business. Gab was starting to get actual traction as a competitor, and there's nothing a monopoly hates more than a competitor!
No, "lack of change" is not the point of conservatism. "Carefully evaluating change before jumping in" is the point of conservatism. This is why all most engineers are conservative engineers, but few good salesmen are.
Meanwhile the left can't get any tracking on Medicare for All, even though a majority of Republicans support it (let alone Democrats).
Right, because most Republicans are not conservative in the political sense (small government). However, never confuse what politicians say they support with what they actually do to support their big donors.
Political views are something you choose, so they can never be a protected category.
"Protected category" is a legal construct, and includes whatever arbitrary groups the law is written to include. California includes political affiliation as a protected category.