I Made a Real Gravity Battery: Here is What Happened!
Introducing the Gravity Battery: Revolutionizing Energy Storage Technology! 🌍⚡️ Discover how this groundbreaking innovation harnesses the power of gravity to store renewable energy efficiently and sustainably.
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Gravity batteries exist already, however instead of a weight that can catastrophically fall down, it's just water. They simply pump a reservoir dam backwards during the day and let it fall out at night to balance solar power. If you try this again, you should try it with a water pump and a large container on the roof.
it honestly baffles me that we don't already do this literally all you'd have to do is put your water heater in the attic instead of in the basement, and then put a little generator partway down the output pipe and bam, power generated with your nightly shower
@@eveleynce probably isnt a very meaningful amount of power. Requires testing! Go build one, I eagerly await
@@eveleynce yeah, you'd need a LOT of head height and volume to generate any meaningful amount of electricity. IOW: you'd need a whole farm of this kind of thing to make it work in a useful way.
In large scale it's called Pumped-storage hydroelectricity.
While this is true it works on a large scale. We are looking for something on the smaller scale the the general user. For example if you could buy a system that produces 10kwh for 12 hours which is 120kwh total. You would need to be able to life enough weight up in a short amount of time. You would need 24kwh of energy for 5 hours per day so ideally a 50kwh solar array would be enough to use day time loads and to be able to bring up that weight high enough to get through the night. While one could reduce the night time loads to which means that you might only need to lift the weight half way the next day. Really you will need about 4 of these units working together. This way you can build a buffer and can handle the loads. Though I have no clue what the requirements are to produce anything or how much or how little you could do for such a small amount of energy. There used to be lights that were made that could run for a while when a weight was released. There is even a few prototype ceiling fans that did the same function.
Some ideas: 1. Instead of an IR sensor, use a microswitch that will be pushed by something attached to the rope. That way, it won't be sensitive to the colour of the rope. 2. Add a centrifugal brake on the rope to slow the weight's descent if the motor breaks. 3. Measure the temperature of the motor and have it turn off if it gets too hot. 4. Add a ratchet on the motor shaft to hold the weight when it has been raised.
He made it manually operated
@@owo2817 ⚠️ God has said in the Quran: 🔵 { O mankind, worship your Lord, who created you and those before you, that you may become righteous - ( 2:21 ) 🔴 [He] who made for you the earth a bed [spread out] and the sky a ceiling and sent down from the sky, rain and brought forth thereby fruits as provision for you. So do not attribute to Allah equals while you know [that there is nothing similar to Him]. ( 2:22 ) 🔵 And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down upon Our Servant [Muhammad], then produce a surah the like thereof and call upon your witnesses other than Allah, if you should be truthful. ( 2:23 ) 🔴 But if you do not - and you will never be able to - then fear the Fire, whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the disbelievers.( 2:24 ) 🔵 And give good tidings to those who believe and do righteous deeds that they will have gardens [in Paradise] beneath which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with a provision of fruit therefrom, they will say, "This is what we were provided with before." And it is given to them in likeness. And they will have therein purified spouses, and they will abide therein eternally. ( 2:25 ) ⚠️ Quran
@@1islam1 r/nobodyasked, take your religious harassment someplace else.
@@1islam1 Religion is for idiots.
5. Stop using 3d printed gears, it will fail
This is cool, but it would have been nice if you'd included more technical data like, final versions - weight of the bag of rocks, distance from top to bottom of rock bag travel, gear ratio, run duration (time it took for the bag to travel from top to bottom, voltage & wattage generated during one rock bag decent, etc.
In short capacity of weight battery :D I imagine there are quite big losses in friction it would be interesting to know these in regards to a chemical battery.
The thing is with this battery: If we are optimistic 70kg 10m and ignore all loses it is about 2Wh. That's roughly enough to power 1 LED light bulb for 10 minutes. The efficiency goes down a lot since it is a low torque/high speed motor and he uses a lot of transmission to get there. Additionally there will be conversion losses from AC to DC to AC. A household uses anywhere between 2-8kWh per day. If you want to save the energy for the night it is about half. That is still between 35-140tons of weight suspended from 10m That's why they use those huge pumping stations and dams to generate power and still don't have enough.
Lifting a 1 ton (1000kg) weight for 1m increases its potential energy by about 3 watts-hour, which is roughly the amount of energy delivered by an AA battery. From this you should subtract all the losses (conversion efficiency both ways, friction etc) to get the final yeld.
@@hugbearsx4 And that is why he probably didn't mention it, I don't think his system reaches 1Wh, but he could maybe get 100W for a few minutes..It's easier to pump the water on the roof and make your own hydropower. But not too much water or your house will collapse.
Just use the formula of potential (gravitational) energy and you can calculate for yourself how bad the energy density for a gravity "battery" is.
I'm pretty sure that the friction of your gears is pretty large. 3D printing is a great thing, but it limits you to materials that make it better for prototyping than final product (as you discovered with the pulleys) If you were using off the shelf parts would you make the gears from plastic with no bearings? A snatch block (block and tackle) would be a natural thing to use since in this case the weight of the block works in you favor. You can get much of your gear reduction from the block.
I do a lot of printed gearing. PETG is the worst material for gears. Even with bearings. That said, you can make surprisingly functional gearsets with other materials. Nylon is great. Even cheap PLA and ABS are fine for many types. But yes, bearings are a must. All that said, yeah, he missed the obvious answer.
Yes, he prints because he can and thinks it's new and neat, not because he should. Definitely not an engineer. Or not a good one.
SNATCH BLOCK
@@JetpackBattle-lc7ob A person of culture i see.
Cool illustration of the principle, and great that you got it working in the end. It would have been interesting to know a bit of data: final mass of rocks, height they were raised, Voltage, current and time as the rocks were raised, Voltage current and time as the rocks were lowered. Obviously nobody would expect great efficiency from a prototype setup like this, but it would add an extra layer of usefulness if the data had been included. Great job anyway.
Hey man I just wanted to say I think your videos are great! You are doing an excellent job at expanding your mind and testing your creativity! I value the way you have the ability to deliver information to your audience in such a comical, yet educational manner. I also enjoy your subscribers constructive feedback allowing them to introduce new ways to view how one might improve on these experiments you present! Keep up the great work please! Whatever you do, don’t stop challenging your imaginative and constructive thinking as well your passion for creating and informing!
Thanks for making this! I've been intrigued by this concept for a while. Nice to see someone test it out
This is a real life enginerring concept that we use already, but cool to see it in DIY
Awesome video. If you put another pully on the weight and fasten the end of the roap on beam next to the beem above you can make a reef making the pully mechanical advantage more so you can have double weight for longer roap and the motor will see the same load.
I wonder if a quality pully and cable system would out perform a greabox. How much energy is waisted by heat in this system?
I saw that coming from the beginning. Anyways, my respect for the effort, video quality and style. Keep up the great work 👍👍
Thank you!
That was brilliant, I'd suggest adding a safety gear that locks the shaft when reachs higher speed to prevent the drop, the same used in the Elevator, However, it would be safer & more convenient to move water upwards from a ground tank to roof tank in the morning and harness the power at night by just opening a faucet.
How much power did you manage to get out of this setup in the end? that is the thing I'm most interested in :)
It's more correct to talk about energy stored (or capacity). My back of the envelope calculation says that he stored about 0.5 Wh of energy. For comparison, a single 18650 li-ion cell can store anywhere between 9 to 13 Wh, so (assuming some losses) it's fair to say that this gravity battery has about 1/30 of a capacity of a single 18650 li-ion cell (so to be honest, it's mostly a fun experiment / toy than anything actually useful). The lights that he is using at the end look like LED lights that need at least a few Watts to operate - so in all likelihood he could keep them on for just 10 - 15 mins, possibly even less (unless camera settings deceived me and my assumptions based on the strength of the light are wrong). Regarding power it's mostly limited by the motor/generator - you couldn't power much more than LED lights from it. With a larger motor/generator you could get much more significant power, but then you would still be limited by the tiny amount of energy stored - imagine more or less being able to power your TV, but only for 30 seconds. You would need to scale it up A LOT to be useful. For example, something like 10 tons at the height of 40 meters would be roughly equivalent to battery pack in my e-bike (which would still be too small to use in a home solar system for energy storage). edit: I needed to correct my math ;)
Yea I did a similar calculation for a home made compressed air energy storage system using harbor freight air tanks and compressors. The amount of energy from the storage was minuscule compared to a single 18650.
@@psow4062 yup considering energy loss in sound, motor heat and probably a ton of friction makes the system quite inefficient compared to a battery
@@nathanp3366 I think the flywheel is one of the most practical ideas for energy storage at the useful scale - energy stored grows with the square of rotational speed. Flywheel with a magnetic bearing and rotating in vacuum has low losses and you can rotate it to very high RPM (you probably would want to put it underground for added safety, though).
@@psow4062 That's actually working idea, but way harder to 3D print at home as DIY fun-project :-D
Interesting proof of concept experiment! For a real-life situation, you would want a deep hole in the ground to contain your counterweight and steel cable to raise and lower it, along with a second cable to allow you to retrieve it if the first one breaks. The motor-generator should be a large permanent magnet DC motor and a steel geared 4:1 primary gearbox for your winch, and a multiple block and tackle with large diameter sheaves for the cable to naturally multiply lifting torque. The winch drum on the motor should incorporate a solenoid-controlled ratchet to keep the weight from dropping when the sun isn't shining. I built one several years ago that will produce 1.5 KW for 4 hours from a 600 lb. weight in a 50 ft. hole. It takes a full day of good sun to 'charge' it up, and I can't run my inverter or charge other batteries while it's in use, so it doesn't get used very often.😜 *P.S:* I used a 4 wire DC stepper motor from some printing equipment that already had the 4:1 gearbox, and a controller that ran on 24VDC. The output part was a bit trickier to design, and I had to make an auto switching device that was triggered by (lack of) input voltage to the controller, so it would switch to the output circuit when the sun wasn't shining. I just set the ratchet solenoid on a separate circuit so I could start it from inside the house. These motors are very efficient since they have multiple windings and essentially output multi-phase AC current, which is easily converted back to 12 or 24vdc for low-voltage lighting, etc. I thought about making a multi-phase > single phase 120 VAC converter, but the speed isn't stable enough to maintain 60HZ with varying loads.🤷♂
I recall doing a video last year about rigging failures - kzhead.info/sun/ptukY62ir6yQdWw/bejne.html - the forces on the ropes and structures can sometimes be suprisingly multiplied depending on the arrangement of the pulleys and angles involved. The top pulleys in this setup pull the roof support beams together with a fair bit of force and could be beyond the design parameters of those beams. The ropes holding the pulleys to the beams are also subject to as much as twice the lifted weight. The people at HowNot2 have lots of interesting tests of climbing gear including ropes and shackles that might be of interest: kzhead.info/sun/oJyzZsWcfKOXgqs/bejne.html Glad nobody got squished by falling stuff.
' can sometimes be suprisingly multiplied ' And don't forget if there's a slip and catch. You can start getting stupidly high forces when something is allowed to fall and then gets caught up again. You do not want to be under this stuff at all, it should be done off angle a bit so the control is out from under..
Yeah, he's lucky that it only ended up with a tile cracking, could have been the whole pergola that got trashed..
You can decrease the design difficulty and possibly improve efficiency by reducing the amount of mass that you are lifting at one time. Using something of uniform size like marbles or ball bearings might be a good alternative, although there would be wasted space and extra expense. A more versatile system would be one that uses fluid. Someone else suggested a capacitor bank, which might also act as a good in-between buffer if you are producing more energy at any given time than you are storing, or to distribute the load if the energy production method results in power output fluctuations.
Yeah, that would just be pumped-storage hydro
I would suggest using pumped-storage hydro, but using whatever the heaviest powder you can get a hold of. Mercury would be very energy dense, or lead powder.
@@emifro theres a reason that wet storage is a thing
@@MegaLokopo the government watching me buy 12 tones of mercury and a used tunnel boring machine (i live right above the citys water supply)
@@samuelmatheson9655 You could probably generate enough energy storage, by building the largest tower you can without permits and digging the deepest hole you can without permits.
So many times people that have 3d printers don't remember they can simply purchase the obvious available metal parts instead of trial and error with 3d prints.
I love this. The problem with chemical batteries is their self discharge rate. My solar system overproduces by a huge margin from May through October. Currently the power company takes that extra power from me and sells it to my neighbors, giving me credit for only about 1/4 of the price that they're charging my neighbors. Then during the winter months when we don't produce enough power they charge me full price for the supplemental power that we need. If I could store the power in a lossless kinetic battery similar to this it would be a game changer. Of course, I'd be trying to store several MWh so just a few rocks won't cut it but I think the concept is sound.
Interesting experiments. One thought, you can reduce the tension in the rope and the torque/gearbox requirements by arranging some pulleys to form a 'block and tackle'. Put two pulleys at the top and two hooked to the bag and run rope through them, finally fixing end of rope to top support. You can get a 4:1 reduction in the rope tension without significant loss in energy storage (or, alternatively lift 4x the weight with your existing). Of course you will need longer rope and take up spool will need to be larger. Just a thought, part of your troubles was the high torque/ tension your winch needed, and this would be a way to reduce that.
You could use a lever combined with a block and tackle. In medieval times, they lifted the massive counterweights on trebuchets by winching the throwing arm down. in this way
Great idea. Should be tested in larger scale with proper installments
Thank you, yes I agree
The most common gravity batteries are done with ... water. Pump water up in a basin on a mountain, drain it trough a hydro-turbine at night.
This was a science project by a senior girl at Lennox Math and Science High-school 5 years ago. I helped her team build a working model and a patent attorney was working on a patent probono when Covid hit. It was for a street light with no batteries or electrical connections.
I'm sure people have suggested this, but you might want to get a really long rope (doesn't have to be so strong) and use a block and tackle to take the load off your motor and gearbox. You'll be able to lift a heaver load with the same motor and gearbox (but maybe a larger reel).
I'd like to see a 3d printed crane used to connect to multiple slightly lighter loads, to build a structure, then lower that structure down to make the gravity battery more useful over longer periods of time. How long did your setup run when it was just using the gravity battery for those two lights?
your videos are starting to get better and interesting! nice job dude, was really entertaining to watch.
Not sure how many times I exclaimed "NO, NOT LIKE THAT!" BUT perseverance paid of in the end thank goodness! Great job.
This video is much better than your previous ones; your content is becoming more entertaining and informative!
Glad you think so!
This was a fun experiment and I enjoyed the video. I wish you provided more data, though (measurements & calculations). The final parameters of the project (power and capacity) might not be too impressive, but I think you should still share them and comment on them. Based on my own calculations (and assumptions) I estimate that you can power these lights at the end for less than 15 mins. Am I much off?
Add a snatch block for mechanical advantage and charge the battery. This produces more electricity with less work. Easier on the engines. Also you could you a car or truck to lift the object and charge a full days worth in minutes. You could use a small harbor freight motor. Multiple fuel sorces. You could manually lift it and work out. You could use a home gym to make a small one. There are way to many possibilities. And one more thing that will blow your mind from lifting those rocks. Water.
Suggested edits/additions: 1) instead of a rope attached to a single point I'd use a chain or rope attached between two points or two pulleys. This way you could lift the weight without having to turn the motor if you wanted to. 2) setup a counter weight system so that there is less power required to lift the weight 3) I'd look into building a lifter that uses something like say nitinol wire and something like "crystal cell batteries" to power them. nitinol has a lot of lifting power from small amounts of electricity, actually heat but electricity works too, and those so-called crystal cell batteries are perfect for that. Those batteries don't put out a lot of power but they would produce more than enough heat to activate nitinol and combining the lifting power of activated nitinol with a counter weight means you could easily lift some rather heavy weight with those cheap and extremely long lasting batteries. I had a similar idea but more complicated idea and was thinking of using water, two containers and a tesla turbine. Instead of using the dropping weight to move a generator I was thinking of using the weight to increase water pressure and a turbine to turn a motor/generator.
I realy like your Project^^ Im not sure if you thought the physics thru tho. The stored energy is the mass (50 kg) times gravitation (~10 m/s^2) and hight you pull (5 m), which results in roughly 2500 Joule. You can convert Joule to Watt-hours by dividing by 3600. So you get around 0.7Wh of stored energy in this case. That means without any losses in your system, so the absolut best case, you will not be able to operate one LED for an hour, as most LED-Lamps consume around 5W per hour. This system can only be improved by increasing mass and/or hight. If you want to run a 5W LED for an hour, you need to pull 360kg up 5m.
Yeah exactly and lifting a 2ton car 10m is about 3-4 phone batteries of energy (in the ideal case without any losses). So getting a few phone batteries seems easier, cheaper, and safer.
i have seem a spanish guy that build some similar to this having 20v for 2 hours with 60 kg
So if I lifted a 1 ton for a 1km it would be 3kWh
And if I lifted 1ton for a 60m it would be 166wh so about 13Ah(12V)
If you utilize a compound pulley system, you can reduce the needed weight while increasing the length of the rope. This would require a lower gear ratio meaning less instances to generate noise.
Could you do something similar with water being the moved weight? This would take the bulk of the weight off of your transfer motor(pump), but add the complexity of needing a separate turbine to convert the energy back. Luckily, it would also be safer in case of failure. Great Project!
I’m glad nobody died during making of this video. 😎😉 I had once a similar plan, which involved the re-use of very old well (now dry but quite deep) and using the motor directly on the top and even making autoloader of the weights which could be stored on the top. What is important - you can make some kind of gearbox allowing you to switch between two motors with different specs and gear ratios 22:43 - one deigned as the elevating unit and the second strictly as the efficient generator. What this video lacks the most are the measurements - how much energy did you put in and how much you were able to get back? You should check the voltage, wattage and time and calculate the power…
How long can it run for and what is the total watt hours put in vs what you got out? This looks like it actually worked half decently and is a good proof of concept. I think it has potential if it's optimized. My train of thought would be to have a setup like this in addition to a battery. In the day time, any excess solar power would go towards lifting the weight. At night wWhen battery gets too low the system would run and put power back into the battery. The advantage of a mechanical solution like this is it does not care about the state of charge, it can be at 0% or 100% or anywhere in between, and sit there. Batteries on the other hand tend to have a preferred state of charge they want to sit at so this mechanical device could help with that.
I've been imagining a mechanical gravity battery which uses hydraulics to hoist the object instead of pulleys. I also imagined 3d printing metal alloys for the gears instead of plastics. My idea allows for very dense and very heavy objects to be used which creates a more energy-dense battery. It would take up less space, and contain more potential energy. The idea was that you could store energy for the darker months of the winter this way instead of storing it overnight.
The wonder what's the max power you can store. It's definitely attractive, especially considering you can lift a car which weighs a few thousand pounds with a simple jack.
Read about Porąbka-Żar powerplant in Poland. This is your idea implemented in practice.
@@mememan2344 Me too. I haven't sat down to calculate gear to weight ratios yetMy partner and I are hoping to store 15kWh in each gravity battery on a remote property in the desert so we can access the property with an electric vehicle. The tech doesn't exist yet, but I different imagine prototypes while I'm hiking.
@@danielmichalski94 Large infrastructure solutions are inspiring. My ideas come from my partner's work on infrastructure in California. What I'm imaging is a energy dense home battery for charging electric vehicles. As an anarchist, I am more interested in small scale energy and water solutions than I am large infrastructure solutions. Small scale solutions can be custom tailored to utilize energy that is already present at the location where it is needed. A rain collecting gravity battery at the top of a tree, for instance, would be useful in rainforest. When the barrel at the top of a tree hits a specific weight then it triggers the gear system to generate electricity. Empty the barrel into your irrigation system, and you can then hoist the empty barrel back up up to the top of the tree using a pulley and your own strength. In an environment with more sun and less rain we can store solar energy in a gravity battery like this video. A small tidal generator, made of bone which is 3d printed from oyster shells which have been ground up, actually uses the gravity of the moon. It's an exciting time to be alive!
@@ericdouglasalexander Orrrr, you can have 2 separate systems One for lifting the weight up, by hand, like a horizontal rudder wheel, combined with pulleys, usually used to harness mechanical power of cattle. With spokes long enough - you could lift tens of tons And another system to slowly release the weight down, with a complement of reducing gears, for something that would work for hours, possibly whole night, and give significant wattage...
I like the idea but i think a heat/sand battery would be a bit smaller. I have always wanted to see someone make a heat sand battery with either a sterling engine or peltier device to convert heat to electricity. You could heat with either an element or a magnifying glass. But since you have solar already nicrome wire would work very well. The hardest part is getting the heat from the center of the battery to something like a sterling generator.
Pretty neat idea. I saw a video a while back where someone did something similar but used a water pump to pump water up to a tank on their roof. Then used a pelton wheel set up to create energy from the water flowing back down.
Yes, I saw that excellent video too. The video demonstrated exactly how _weak_ the system was at small home scales especially using just water. kzhead.info/sun/drGLad5xj6RueoU/bejne.html So even all the weight of a large water barrel (~500lbs) stored at the very top of the roof only amounts to the energy of a *AA battery* (~3.9 Wh)! Not including any losses from the generator either. Want more power? Use more water barrels but remember each one is already 500lbs when full of water. The physics potential energy equation verifies it: E = m × g × h, where E=energy(joules),g=9.81m/s², m=mass(kg) then convert resulting joules value to watt hours. That's why commercial pumped storage facilities are very large using the weight of a small lake at minimal. Plus the height will be several house stories. Sure, water is fairly heavy at nearly 1000kg/m³ but not nearly as heavy as steel which is an impressive 7850kg/m³. Some other metals even heavier. The denser the weight then the density of the energy storage is. That's why commercial heavy lift gravity storage use metal weights or combination metal + water as hydraulic fluid in vertical mineshafts. See: Energy Vault, Gravitricity, ARES, CNTY, and Gravity Power. They are powerful and store more energy compared to the best Lithium storage we have now (Tesla Megapack). But the cost greatly depends on the availability of abandoned mineshafts. But there are 10s of thousands of in the US. I think large scale gravity storage is doable though using mineshaft or drilling techniques and iron masses. Because pumped hydro has too few suitable natural geographic locations. Plus with climate change and increasing long droughts, water use and preservation will be even more highly contentious than they already are. That only further reduces availability of commercial pumped hydro energy storage.
I was watching the rocks above the masonry wincing the whole time... I hope the cracked pavement will not be too hard to fix, but that looked like a costly mistake. Great video though ^^
Hello, great video! I have a question: How long did it take to lift the weight, and how long did it take for the weight to come back to the floor?
Considering a scenario where a 60kg weight is lifted to a height of 6m, the potential energy of the weight would amount to approximately 3600 Joules or around 1 watt-hour (Wh) of energy. Assuming a motor with a power rating of 50 watts and neglecting any losses (assuming 100% efficiency), it would require approximately 1.2 minutes for the motor to consume or produce 1 watt-hour of energy. However, this might not be particularly useful when considering the energy storage capacity of phone batteries, which typically range from 5 to 15 watt-hours (Wh).
Thanks, and the time that the weight takes to come back to floor is 1.2 min?
You could also use a buck converter and a higher voltage generator to get more power in a short time . If the generator is 60v/ 500ma then using a buck converter you can get 12v / 2.6a power that can be stored in a capacitor bank
Better idea: Instead of those bags, take a bunch of sleeping bags and a small platform, find some more "brothers" and invite them on a "camping" trip. When they ask "Why are we camping on your roof?" tell them something like "you can see the night sky better, it's cool!", then when they wake up, they'll conveniently be back on the ground and hopefully won't ask anymore questions!
Usually the energy conversion ratio is what fights against the widespread use of gravity batteries. You have to power motors and then have it regenerated by motors which can lose you a lot of energy. Not that it matters in this case where you are just using extra energy, but it is a problem for widescale use. This may be a bit of a gimmic considering it probably only supplies power for like 2 minutes but it is cool.
Assalomu Alaykum. Good to see your idea turned into experiment. Are you willing also try storing energy with other methods than battery like pressure, tension or heat..? In addition, experiments on getting energy would be also interesting. Just to add, wind turbines also contain gears and require 3D printing and is fun...
Va alaykum Assalom, Thank you for your interesting ideas, I will consider them in my videos!
I like this idea. You could also try using a gravity water pump to store energy. I remember seeing a video of someone using one for water supply.
Great video
Thank you!
A very useful video and experiment. You put all the weight onto just one point which you had to make stronger. If you fix one end of your rope to the beam, attach a pulley to the weight, pass the rope through this pulley and back up to a second pulley on the beam then down to your generator/motor, your motor/gearbox will be lifting half the weight as half is supported by the beam. You will also have an additional 2:1 reduction. You could also place your generator motor on the roof and eliminate the second pulley, also avoiding loss of ground space.
The second roller is bigger, ticker and black. You can use physical components as limiters, to not let you turn one set of switches on while the others are already on. Like an actual panel and you cant change them, as turning one on blocks the others.
The inefficiencies in this project are many. It's a great starting point. You should have bought an all metal gear box. They come in tons of gear ratios and they have bearings for far superior reduction of losses, never mind being much stronger than plastic parts! Use a BLDC motor. They are easy and cheap to find in a Kv similar to your 65% efficient brushed motor. Efficiencies will be more like 80-90%. They will also can be far more powerful that your brushed motor and won't over heat so much! All of that combined, I'm betting you will be able to significantly improve what you have now and get a lot more run time. I LIKE the idea, but it needs improving! Please make this again with better parts! I think you will be pleasantly surprised with the improved performance!!! *** Your solar panels are variable output devices. They won't make the same wattage every day and it is rare they will ever make their rated output. Clouds will reduce that for you. Angle of sun to the panels will reduce that for you. Tracking the sun will decrease this inefficiency! Hot panels make less current and heat shortens their life spans. Keep your panels at less than 26C for best results. There are times your panels will make more current than it takes to lift your bags of rocks. You may have already finished lifting the rocks. Add a bank of super caps in parallel to the motor controller to soak up small current changes. Add a pack in parallel to the rock lifter to charge that can soak up the extra power. Eliminating losses is a big deal! Even batteries don't convert 100% of current in into 100% current out.
My brother is a Muslim Mashallah
The most important thing for this kind of setup is total cost and total energy gain over it's full lifespan. Yet there wasn't even a glimpse on the initial costs.
Despite what most people say, the 60fps is so much nicer than 24. Thank you. It's worth the extra processing and storage involved. but, you could do well with camera settings that induce a but more motion blur.
Try to improve your handwriting
Bro its hard to write in iPad with hands
That was a great video and maybe the best one of this channel. I'm following you since you were 10 000 subscribers. That's a really interesting proof of concept video .
There are some excellent suggestions in the comments already, but one thing that I would suggest is to do more detailed engineering so that you know the failure points of every component, so that it involves less guess work and allows you to optimize the set up more easily
Did you think of something less strenuous for the motor and the gearbox? Rather than lifting the whole bag, replace the bag of stones and the rope with a chain. The motor lifts the chain into a basket at the top. At the end of the day the basket is heavy enough and can be used to make energy. The chain does not have to be thick. It can be long and thin so a small portion of the chain is in the air at any given moment.
gravity bateries are often seen as big water pools, pumping water up when there is acces power, and letting it down again when there is need (plus it also gains some extra free potential energy when it rains)
I really enjoyed watching this video, i would also like to see you build a water gravity battery. Then compare which one was easier/cheaper to build and which one produced the most energy.
Awesome work. Great trial and execution
Thank you so much for your feedback!
Great video explaining the fundamental theories behind storage. Keep it man, thanks
Thanks, will do!
I think you have a great idea and you have inspired me to work on my own version that I'm hoping will have improved efficiency
This was a fun video to watch. Showed some nice basic concepts and 3d printing and prototyping. Gravity batteries have appeal due to their inexpensive ingredients, however, as noted, the energy density is pretty low. A perfect battery (no friction losses or wire resistance loss) would store energy =mgh (mass-g-ht), so a 100kg mass lifted 10m would store 9810j, which is less than the amount of energy in a AA battery. Where I grew up, I lived on a creek where the tide was about 1.5m. I envisioned large floating weights that would be lifted by the tide, then fall under a gear reduction, driving a generator. I concluded, sadly, that I would need 500,000 kg lifted a little over a meter to make 5kwh per high tide, about what my house used at night. Not feasible for the middle school version of me :( That said, there is a company that makes small LED lights that use this principle. They run for about 2h using a 10kg bag of dirt lifted about 2m, and make a few milliwatts of power, enough to run lights for reading, food prep. The idea was to replace kerosene lamps or open flames for reading. They have changed their product to a new one called "nowlight," a human powered generator + rechargable battery where a few minutes of pulling a cord charges a battery for several hours worth of light, or many minutes of phone charging. Another great option is to use small solar powered yard lights, charge them outside, and bring in at night.
I remember a figure in my school physics book showing a 1,5 V cell with a face and arms and legs lifting a car 2 meters to demonstrate the energy storage of such a cell. You need heavy weights and great heights to store sufficient amounts of energy. But I like the concept. In larger scales it could (and maybe will) be a great alternative energy storage.
It's a great project. Gravitiy-based batteries already exist, there's one tower of concrete somewhere in the world that lifts weights all the day and picks them from a pool so that it can effectively accumulate a lot of energy. And of course there are STEP water dams that pump water from the bottom to the top using input energy, and let the water flow down to produce energy.
The idea is solid, but it would also be fun to see what would happen if you could wind up a thick metal spring instead. Not saying it would be easier to make, but it's less restrictive for domestic use. Relais instead of switches could also be great, one of them being a ratchet on a load switch so that it only unwinds when in use. I'm a fan and I think this could have some real use.
I joined the UK Green Party in 1987, and the best energy batery I have found is Compressed CO2. Here is a bit of the Wiki: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Compressed carbon dioxide energy storage can be used to store electrical energy at grid scale. The gas is well suited to this role because, unlike most gases, it liquifies under pressure at ambient temperatures, so occupies a small volume. Energy Storage News reported that it will be "a cheaper form of energy storage than lithium-ion batteries".[1] Process A 100MWh store requires about 2000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). At the start of the process, CO2 gas is stored at atmospheric pressure in a large expandable fabric container, like those used to store biogas, housed within an inflatable protective dome. To store energy, the gaseous CO2 is compressed to around 70 bar, which heats it to around 400 °C. Passing it through a heat exchanger and a thermal store cools the supercritical carbon dioxide gas enough to liquify it. The liquid CO2 can be stored in this state indefinitely in pressurised cylinders. When energy is required, the CO2 is passed back through the heat exchanger, where it is warmed by recovering heat from the heatstore and reverts to high-pressure gas. The gas is used to drive a turbine to generate electricity as it passes back into the low pressure store, completing the closed cycle. [2][3] Advantages Liquid carbon dioxide can be stored at ambient temperatures, unlike Liquid air energy storage (LAES), which must keep liquid air cold at −192°C, though the CO2 does need to kept pressurised. Liquid CO2 has a much higher energy density (66.7 kWh/m3), than compressed air in typical to compressed-air energy storage (CAES) systems (2-6 kWh/m3), meaning the same energy can be stored in a much smaller volume.[4] All the components of the system are readily available: gas storage domes are used in biogas production; the compressors and heat exchangers are used in the oil and gas industries; the turbine is similar to a medium pressure steam turbine.[1] Here is my Signature message: Suppose that Jesus died at this time and date: 2:52 in the afternoon of the 27th day of April the 4th month of 31 AD. The smallest number with roots that could show this time and date is 294=2*3*7*7=1*7*2*1*1*7*3*1 as 2:52 is also 172 minutes past Noon and the 27th of April is the 117th day of 31 AD. Now Jesus said in the verse Mat 5:18 that not a single letter would be missing of the Hebrew Law, even over such a long time and much translating. If he thought that there is more information hidden among the letters, that would be revealed by our computers, this could explain why he wanted not a single letter missing. Well 294+518=812 and 812 is the Mirror image of 518! Also the name of God, in about 1000 BC, looked like the number 3732, and it was sometimes abbreviated to 732 and 294=7*7*3*2! Also 518=2*37*7 which is the reverse of 7732! Also the 42 months of Jesus teaching and healing in Israel was also 42=7*3*2! Luke 16:17 says much the same as Mat 5:18 and 1617=11*3*7*7=7*7*3*11 and if here the 11 is like a Roman Numeral 2 which is II another 237 and 732! Also 42=3*14 which is like Pi=3.14 and Jesus was 3 times 14 Generations after Abraham! Also the 3 times 14 Generations is outlined in the verse Mat 1:17 and Psalm 117 is the exact middle chapter of 1189 chapters in the KJV Bible! Also 1189-117=1072 and 1072 is the reverse of 2701, which is the most famous 4 digit number in "Bible Numerics" (a sub division of Biblical Numerology) mostly because 1072+2701=3773 and 2701=37*73. 2701 is famous because of many other reasons, but especially as the 28 Hebrew letters of the 7 words that make Genesis 1:1 is also 28 numbers, as each letter in ancient times was a number as well, and these 28 add up to 2701! The 28 numbers: 2 200 1 300 10 400 2 200 1 1 30 5 10 40 1 400 5 300 40 10 40 6 1 400 5 1 200 90. Word number 1 is made of 6 letters 2+200+1+300+10+400=913. Word number 2 is made of 3 letters 2+200+1=203. Word number 3 is made of 5 letters 1+30+5+10+40=86. Word number 4 is made of 2 letters 1+400=401. Word number 5 is made of 5 letters 5+300+40+10+40=395. Word number 6 is made of 3 letters 6+1+400=407. Word number 7 is made of 9 letters 5+1+200+90=296. 296+407+395+401+86+203+913=2701=37*73 and 2701+1072=3773 ! KJV 1st book 01 as 50 chapters and ends 50 chapters into the KJV Bible. 02 40 90, 03 27 117, 04 36 153, 05 34 187, 06 24 211, 07 21 232, 08 4 236, 09 31 267, 10 24 291, 11 22 313, 12 25 338, 13 29 367, 14 36 403, 15 10 413, 16 13 426, 17 10 436, 18 42 478, 19 150 628, 20 31 659, 21 12 671, 22 8 679, 23 66 745, 24 52 797, 25 5 802, 26 48 850, 27 12 862, 28 14 876, 29 3 879, 30 9 888, 31 1 889, 32 4 893, 33 7 900, 34 3 903, 35 3 906, 36 3 909, 37 2 911, 38 14 925, 39 4 929, 40 28 957, 41 16 973, 42 24 997, 43 21 1018, 44 28 1046, 45 16 1062, 46 16 1078, 47 13 1091, 48 6 1097, 49 6 1103, 50 4 1107, 51 4 1111, 52 5 1116, 53 3 1119, 54 6 1125, 55 4 1129, 56 3 1132, 57 1 1133, 58 13 1146, 59 5 1151, 60 5 1156, 61 3 1159, 62 5 1164, 63 1 1165, 64 1 1166, 65 1 1167, 66 22 1189. The 19th book is the book of Psalms. The 18th book ends 478 books into the KJV Bible and 478+117=595 and 595*2=1190 and 595-1=594 595+594=1189! Another mention of "In the beginning" like Genesis 1:1 is the first verse of the New Testament book John 1:1. In 51 Greek letters of 17 words adds up to 3627=3*3*13*31=117*31! Also 51=3*17=1*17*3*1 and of the 17 words, 17=1*17!! The 51 numbers: 5 50 1 100 600 18 8 50 70 30 70 3 70 200 20 1 10 70 30 70 3 70 200 8 50 80 100 70 200 300 70 50 9 5 70 50 20 1 10 9 5 70 200 8 50 70 30 70 3 70 200 Word number 1 is made of 2 letters 5+50=55. Word number 2 is made of 4 letters 1+100+600+18=719. Word number 3 is made of 2 letters 8+50=58. Word number 4 is made of 1 letters 70. Word number 5 is made of 5 letters 30+70+3+70+200=373. Word number 6 is made of 3 letters 20+1+10=31. Word number 7 is made of 1 letters 70. Word number 8 is made of 5 letters 30+70+3+70+200=373. Word number 9 is made of 2 letters 8+50=58. Word number 10 is made of 4 letters 80+100+70+200=450. Word number 11 is made of 3 letters 300+70+50=420. Word number 12 is made of 4 letters 9+5+70+50=134. Word number 13 is made of 3 letters 20+1+10=31. Word number 14 is made of 4 letters 9+5+70+200=284. Word number 15 is made of 2 letters 8+50=58. Word number 16 is made of 1 letters 70. Word number 17 is made of 5 letters 30+70+3+70+200=373. 55+719+58+70+373+31+70+373+58+450+420+134+31+284+58+70+373=3627=3*3*13*31=117*31! Someone who knows Greek wrote this note: "Actually the last letter of the second word is subscripted by another, viz iota, this being the second element of a long vowel dipthong. In fact, therefore, the word has 5 letters; hence the entry should be "8 + 10" above the dipthong instead of 18 - 8 and 10 being the respective values of letters 4 and 5." So there is 52 letters and 52=4*13 which is like Pi=3.14 reversed, and also like the 4th month and 31 AD!! Conclusion? Design or Coincidence and even both? My opinion, the Code exists, God exists and Jesus exists!!!
Abandoned mineshafts are said to be an excellent candidate for gravity batteries. A winch can derive power by lowering 100 tons or more, down a mile or more, and recharge the system by lifting it back up. They imagine lifting stone blocks or other solid ballast. (Earthquake if the weight falls?) I suppose you could pump water instead (pumped storage), but you need one reservoir high and that doesn't leak out, and one reservoir low that doesn't get leaked into. The decision is based on the amount of energy stored (kWh), rate of energy acceptance and release (power), and round-trip efficiency, versus the cost of the equipment. How does it compare to available kinds of batteries, capacitors, superconducting inductors, flywheels, pumped heat, [unknowns]?
I think the idea behind is to place the motor/generator at the highest position that will pull the load upwards with no or limited pulleys and will have a much better efficiency?
That was great try, but you definitely need metal and, therefore, more effective gears and other details, more powerful motor. Yes, that type of system works much better when it is powerful, but it can also be very helpful built as a real system, not as experiment. I've used the 10kg version before where I had to lift the load with my hands to charge my phone and a couple of powerbanks during extended power outages. It was a wonderful thing. It's a pity that I had to get rid of it.
I have 12-volt solar panels that run air compressors when the sun shines. I save the compressed air in a system of tanks and pipes. When there is no sun, I run a small generator operated by that compressed air. I call it my "AIR BATTERY".
Nice idea:))
It definitely works better at scale. Infact someone once told me that something like 80% of the USAs power reserves are stored in reservoirs. These are the same concept as the gravity battery. When the wind turbines are creating excess power they pump water into a reservoir up high, then when these no wind they use the water to power hydro turbines.
How heavy would the weight be if we have only 10 meters height and need to store 5 kWh? We can again use the formula E = m * g * h to determine the weight needed, but this time for 5 kWh (which is 18 * 10^6 joules) and a height of 10 meters. If we rearrange the formula to m, we get: m = E / (g * h) = 18 * 10^6 joules / (9.81 m/s² * 10 m) = 183514 kg. This means that at a height of 10 meters, you would need a weight of about 183.5 tons to store 5 kWh of energy. Again, please note that this calculation assumes an ideal, 100% efficient system. Actual systems always have some amount of energy loss, so the actual weight needed would have to be even higher.
Best video i've seen yet, keep going!
I think lowering the stress on all the parts using mechanical advantage and pulleys might be a good idea. It would use a lot more rope, but that might be an advantage.
So much friction might as well hoist it up using your car to pull it at that point burn like less than a ml of fuel and drive like 10 feet lol
If you were making a large-scale mechanical battery, you could attach a gas bag to the weight, and inflate it with helium to make it easier to lift. Then when the battery is at maximum, pump the helium back into a storage container. It doesn't even need to be pressurized, just shifted from one place to another. I think this would increase the efficiency of the battery, because even though you're using a fan or pump to move the helium around, it doesn't take a lot of energy to do so.
Woah, nice idea!
A 12/24 volt vehicle winch motor would be much better for that application and designed for the stresses of a high weight load. Off grid 20+ years and I use LIFEPO4 batts for night time storage and excess power in daytime is used for charging ebikes and a dump load like water heating. Heating water is also a way to store energy for night time use.
Thank you for your feedback!
I saw that coming from the beginning. Anyways, my respect for the effort, video quality and style. Keep up the great work
gravitational storage is actually used very often in the power grid of at least america we tend to use two large bodies of water at different heights do to the safety of not having a large mass dependant on a single point the ideal case is actually a large plot of land where two pools of water can be formed, however I suspect that you could dig out two caverns and use them as your water storage too
New to this channel, great video but please when you save an STL go to options and set the quality to fine (or increase it). this will make the surfaces smoother.
Great vidoe, I wanted to try something like this and I beleive a company wants implement something like this on a large scale using huge cement blocks they would stack. Problem is efficiency loss is so poor for this and things like hydro energy storage. I agree that even high end lithium batteries, at this point in time, are not the future of energy storage.
Depending on supply in your location, use water instead of rocks. Easier to adjust the load, heavy enough to do the work and less catastrophic if it falls.
Everything I thought was gonna go wrong in this video did. I was like "that pully is gonna break".. pully broke, then "that gearbox is gonna break".. gear box broke.. "your gonna crack the floor".. floor cracked. 3d printers are great but they are not a catch all solution to any problem. Of course they could have been used more effectively but you would have had to distribute the load more. Also would have been cooler to see the system dynamically store energy based on electrical load instead if having the manual switches. And yeah, I think someone pointed out an emergency brake in case of failure would have been nice and cool
Na každý konec hřídele dej generátor. Při pohybu dolů budou generovat oba dva generátory. Více elektrické energie. Každá může mít svůj elektrický okruh pro například pro žárovku. Na jedné můžeš v noci svítit na druhém okruhu nabíjet telefon.
I have been thinking about making one of these, but making 2-3 story tower to have the generator be on top of, and doing something like throwing baseballs/etc up to the "roof" of the tower to be collected there, to be funneled into a container and once there is enough in it, the weight will drop.. could be used by weight loss seekers to carry a heavy object up steps in order to get a cardio workout.. could use super-soaker water guns to shoot a target high up and thus transport water to fill up the tank, etc
really cool this idea was actually tried successfully in the past spinning high inertia disks very fast and then slowing them down to get back energy of course in a vacuum
those senors were super Kool, you can use them to count
man, that night cap looked really good
I think using gravity batteries to power multiple houses or small town is a good idea, but the only limitation is that it has a set energy output, and you would have to turn off appliances to be below the energy usage limit
For 3d prints that must not break easily, just use more % infill, I sometimes use even 100%, sometimes it's cheaper than printing it multiple times because it broke
Hmm, i think you are right, printing with 100% infill is better than printing it several times😅 thank you for the tip, I’ll consider that in the next projects
Have you tried a flywheel? They can mechanically store energy as well. There is a large one in our area. They use it to level out the surges and slumps in demand. Only disadvantage over a gravity battery is that you can’t store the energy for a long period of time.
I've wondered about a flywheel running in vacuum to reduce drag. Also inputing/extracting the energy magnetically. Limiting factor on energy is usually burst speed. Rpm at which flywheel will fly apart....if flywheel could be supported by large bearing pushing on it's largest diameter inwards the forces trying to expand the flywheel can be resisted by a bearing backed up with a housing as thick as needed. 'No need for a hub either. Air bearings good for high speed/low drag. Flywheel could be a loop of flexible foil that can be magnetised. Housing is hollow cylinder with lots of holes to provide the little pockets of pressurised air to float the foil flywheel loop. Should be able to run *very* high rpm
@@stevecummins324 would be interesting to test how much the vacuum helped. The industrial ones I have seen are very smooth. I wonder if the vacuum would help the efficiency of the motor/generator? Dissipate heat better.
@@MattnUska aerodynamic drag forces proportional to square of peripheral speeds. (at none supersonic speeds anyway) So doubling rpm quadruples drag forces and energy wasted. Drag is proportial to air density. Halving air density halves drag forces. Vacuum prevents heat loss by convection. Not good for surrounding coils of a motor, as they heat up due to current flow. However if motor had moving permenant magnets, and fixed coils outside... The electrical coils could still be cooled, and the reduced convection of heat to the magnets might even reduce the temperature of the magnets. Magnets start to loose their strength if heated too much.
@@stevecummins324 funny thing after I made this comment , a video “the aerodynamics of a cow” showed up in my feed. Haha.
bro what are those clear plastic boxes called and where’d you get them? i got one and forgot where i got it and i need more
My Finishing thesis for Bachelors was the both side working hydro pump generators . Just the same principle. Giviing out energy to the grid when the peak demand occurs. in my opinion this kind of systems could be used to store potential potential energy but not for daily uses or conventional home uses as they are kind of complex, also would require technical maintanence often i guess. Though stacking these around somewhere kind of further from the living areas to get rid of the noise and the machine related malfunctional hazards to power up small lighting and maybe heat element systems would be so cool! Great work man. hope you will achieve more. if you would like to continue to use the same fan maybe using a small heat exchanger and a fan would be making things better overall what do you think?
If you want to greatly improve the gear fitment/tolerance, thereby improving efficiency, use T-Cut or other abrasive polish and drive the gears with a drill or other rotary tool. Finish up with some graphite powder for long lasting lubrication.
I like your resilience.. no failure is too expensive not to be tried again 😊
use rain water reservoir and a spring retention lift mechanism, Just use a reservoir which holds 30x weight needed per night, when the water weight reaches the ground use a mechanism to empty it and it will return to the top.
I'm gonna get soooo many "free energy device" video recommendations for watching this.
every guy watching is relieved you made a double take & took that rock
Power companies use gravity batteries to store their excess power. They use a pump to pump water up a hill. then run a turbine from letter the water go back down using gravity.
As first, you have my respect for trying such endaevour and mostly succeeding with it. Good job. 1) It would be much more easy, if the weight is inside some "shaft" - therefore it will not hurt anyone (or crush anything) when falling. 2) Gravity batery is a great way to backup some important area lighting (like circuit braker box lighting, or workbench lighting, or wood chopping block lighting for example). 3) Even more interesting solution of the gravity powered light would be possibility, to prime it (pull the weight up by hand), if there is no sun, or if input part of the machine does not work properly. I understand, almost 50 kilograms is quite heavy weight, but by ussage of pulleys and/or other simple machines (with brake on the rope), would add MUCH more flexibility. BTW, the gravity batery would work pretty good even in an arctic night - unlike chemical bateries. 4) 2 questions the engineer should ask and try to answer with the gravity batery, is "How much power do i need?" and "For how long period of time?" The period of time can be prolonged by either hightening the highest part of the construction, therefore the weight travels longer route, or by adding another weights of the same weight, in parallel seting. The "how much power do i need" question is usually answered by the scale of whole gravity batery construction and by the weight scale. 5) There is company known as "Gravity light", wich specializes on gravity powered lighting, for backups, assistance, or for developing areas as home-lighting. They have very inteligent and cheap design, from wich one can get plenty heaps of inspiration.
Also use big magnets for the weight and drop them down a copper lined shaft it would take super long to descend and reduce mechanical strain naturally due to Lenz law and Foucault current.
Interesting. It would be good to know the height and the final mass that you used. I'm guessing ~50Kg and a height of 5m. That means you stored ~2500J of energy or ~0.7Wh of energy. I have a small usb backup battery sitting on my desk that stores 40Wh of energy in a pack that is about the size of a deck of playing cards that I'm certain cost less than the cost of the hardware you bought and made. In addition, it's losses are much smaller than the mechanical losses in your gearbox. Don't take my comment as a negative comment. Yours was a very interesting experiment in that it shows the limits of mechanical gravity batteries compared to electric batteries. It also demonstrated the very real dangers of lifting heavy objects high in the air several times!!!!!! (I'm glad you included those failures.)
How do you keep it from going back to the original state for later use?
Really great video. lots of hard work and effort was put into this. I was just wondering what software you were using at 1:26-2:34. it looks similar to Microsoft whiteboard, but yours seemed to have more features and overall a better feel
Thank you for the feedback! It is Concepts app
Equation for potential energy is mass (kg) x height (m) x g (9.81 m/s/s) Do the math. A ten tonne mass falling through about 37 metres 'releases' about 1 kWh (assuming no losses). With most setups friction is huge, and times generator efficiency you will be lucky to get 20% out = 200 Watt-hours. To be of any use you need to suspend your entire house on the rope. Good luck with the gearbox then! :) A good mass storage system is water pumped uphill and run down through turbines when required, AKA pumped storage.
i think you could also use a internally geared ebike hub motor and the hub would act as the spindle aswellthen with pulley set up to act as gearing it would be a compact and strong unit