Advanced Rail Energy Storage, LLC (ARES) announced that its proposed commercial-scale gravity-based rail energy storage project has been granted a right-of-way lease by the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”). Once operational, the 50-megawatt project will encompass 106 acres of public land in Southern Nevada, and help stabilize the electric grid. ARES Nevada will connect to the power western grid via the facilities of Valley Electric Association.
Utilizing gravity, ARES Nevada will store energy and release it for dispatch when it’s needed. Using a single railroad track sited on a gentle grade, multiple electric locomotive cars can move up the track as they receive excess power from solar and wind power plants during sunny and windy days. The train cars will remain available and, when needed, be dispatched slowly downhill, using their motor-generators to return power to the electricity grid.
What closed lines in the UK have a sufficiently long and sufficiently consistent gradient to make good use of this idea? Could this type of system store power regenerated from the railways as well as excess generation from renewable sources?
Rayjayk
AIUI … that project requires a new build up a deliberately graded slope, over a sizeable area, not a simple single railway track. Can someone please confirm this?
Greg T The BBC Click feature last year showed a single track with lots of airings at each end. I got the impression that several trains could be sent up or down in convoy if required. Clearly more parallel tracks delivers more capacity.
RAYJAYK must be thinking of the Foxton Lift…
Oh yes, pumping water is not cool, so lets use trains. There’s one born every minute, it seems…
If you really insist on raising and lowering concrete, rather than the cheapest (per tonne) material on the planet, then you certainly don’t need cute locmotives and third rail power supply. Cable haulage would mean that the power would be delivered and collected from a fixed point. And lifting vertically would cut out most of the friction losses (though you might want a very high cliff to dangle your concrete lumps off).
Lumps of concrete have been used as an energy source (in addition to the use of weights in clocks). There was a proprietory gas lighting system that used a weight driven blower to produce gas from paraffin and distribute it round the house. You had to wind it up once a day.
Malcom
I tried to say exactly that some time back ……
As for lumps of concrete ( or whatever) … that was the basis of the magic late C19th energy-storage system … Hydraulic Accumulator towers.
[ For the uninitiated – large masses on top of tall sealed water conatiners, maintained at a high pressure …
Explanatory link here ]