[HN Gopher] Battery-electric "Infinity Train" will charge itself...
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Battery-electric "Infinity Train" will charge itself using gravity
(2022)
Author : jermaustin1
Score : 44 points
Date : 2023-07-31 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Not gonna lie, I checked their price and it didn't jump 200% in
| one day. so...?
|
| As the article questions - "Is this a super-specific single use
| case, or something that will be able to roll out to a wider
| market?"
|
| Reading the other comments, and understanding that the technology
| (brake-to-charge) exists already in the market, I wonder what is
| the 'patentable' thing that would propel their stock. Would they
| manufacture engines & components (i.e. to install to every
| wagon's braking system?) Doesn't that IP/patent already exist?
| grecy wrote:
| See also - many mines around the world using enormous electric
| trucks that never need to be re-charged. They go uphill empty,
| and re-gen their entire battery on the way down when fully
| loaded.
|
| https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1124478_world-s-largest...
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I wonder what they are doing with the excess power. I'm sure it
| wouldn't be worth it to pump back to the grid, but maybe to off
| load into mining equipment, especially since the truck would
| need to start at around 60% battery charge each day to avoid
| over charging.
| Arrath wrote:
| Running other equipment within the mine and lessening the
| load on the generators, generally.
| presidentender wrote:
| I am embarrassed to say how little sense that made to me - the
| mines with which I am passingly familiar are all open-pit
| copper mines, where the extraction takes place below the
| processing, and I could not get my head around the idea that
| this one truck was taking some material down to the mine.
|
| Of course the answer is that this mine is at the top of a
| mountain, and the processing facility is lower. The material
| the truck hauls is lime and marl.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Seems like a circular problem, how did you get all the cargo at
| the top of the hill in the first place?
| bwilliams18 wrote:
| they're extracting the cargo from the earth at the top of the
| hill.
| jlhawn wrote:
| It's a mine. The hill _is_ the cargo.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Mountain forming is how all that cargo got to the top.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Crazy, basically using the stored potential energy to their
| advantage.
|
| Never occurred to me to use the energy to create electricity.
| Makes me wonder if you could build a power plant at the bottom
| of a mountain that slowly levels the mountain to power the
| local grid.
|
| I wonder just how much potential energy could be extracted from
| a mountain?
| heattemp99 wrote:
| I've got an idea.. we build a wall at the edge of a huge
| mountain area. Water collects behind the wall during the
| winter, and then in the spring and summer we let the water
| out through a hole in the wall, which spins generators while
| the water flows out the hole.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Interestingly, there's a lot of current work around grid
| energy storage. Storing excess wind/solar power for use
| overnight, etc.
|
| Everybody assumes batteries (lithium etc.) as the way to
| go. However the greenest / most efficient way to store the
| energy is actually just pumping water uphill to a
| reservoir, and extracting the energy by letting it flow
| back down.
|
| Of course this storage system only works wherever there is
| someplace "higher" to pump the water. My understanding is
| that it's not worth the trouble to build a hill/mountain to
| pump the water up.
| ElectricalUnion wrote:
| And when you have the space and the ability to build such
| pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities, they require
| much cheaper and much more environment friendly
| materials.
|
| And most already build hydroelectricity facilities can be
| retrofitted (although at high cost) to become pumped-
| storage hydroelectricity facilities.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Tom Scott made a video about a lower-tech version of this [0], an
| aerial ropeway that transports loads of shale over a mile and a
| half using the power of gravity. There's no need for regenerative
| batteries here, as the empty cars going back uphill are directly
| connected (via the rope) to the laden carts traveling downhill.
| Simple, elegant, and efficient.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiYXI1Tfu4
| [deleted]
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| With the advent of recuperative braking, Sisyphus found a new
| purpose in afterlife after Hades had modified his punishment a
| little bit.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| In Sitzerland they developed a such truck (2017). He drives down
| fully loaded with stones and does load the batterys. Then the
| truck drives up again empty.
|
| https://www.empa.ch/web/s604/e-dumper
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Didn't think perpetual machines would still make HN front page
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| I mean it is clickbait but it is also a thing that can easily
| work and there are already mining trucks that do this.
|
| They work because they transport matter from a higher place to
| a lower place and therefore are much heavier downhill then
| uphill.
| Gare wrote:
| Electric trains and trams in Europe already have regen
| braking. And no need for batteries!
| adjav wrote:
| Yeah, but that does require a fair bit of additional
| infrastructure, running overhead wires and having it
| connected to the power grid. Makes sense in populated
| areas, but for mining trains in Australia, potentially
| 1000s of kms from the nearest city? This seems like a
| reasonable alternative
| surfmike wrote:
| How does that work without batteries? Where does the energy
| go?
| ljf wrote:
| Back into the power grid.
|
| Quote: When regenerative braking is employed, the current
| in the electric motors is reversed, slowing down the
| train. At the same time, the electro motors generate
| electricity to be returned to the power distribution
| system
|
| https://www.ctc-n.org/technologies/regenerative-braking-
| trai...
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| I assume it goes into the grid. Possibly to other trains
| that need the power right then.
| michaelmior wrote:
| Of course it's not really a perpetual machine. It only works as
| long as there is enough material to transport downhill.
| heattemp99 wrote:
| A normal truck uses it's brakes constantly when going down
| hill, turning all that potential energy of the cargo into heat.
| This truck charges batteries to slow itself down via a
| generator. At the bottom, it weighs much less, thus even
| accounting for loses, there's enough energy to get the
| "lightweight" truck back to the top.
| millerm wrote:
| That's not what is happening here. It uses gravity to generate
| energy as the mass going downhill is significantly greater than
| the mass going back up. The mass of the load is used for
| "powering" the regenerative braking system (resistance is
| converted to electricity, stored in the batteries) when going
| downhill. The batteries are now charged when at the bottom. The
| heavy load is removed from the train. The generated power is
| used to take the train with significantly less mass back up to
| be refilled. There is no "perpetual" energy here. Basically the
| fuel is the load. It still takes energy to load and unload the
| payload. No magic here. It's just a function of how much mass
| can the train take downhill, how much regeneration occurs
| during that operation, and how much energy it takes to take the
| empty train back up to the top.
|
| Just as you can take a tiny regenerative toy car, give it a few
| little revving pushes on the floor (let's say 4 feet of
| regeneration), you can let it go and have it go 100 feet, as
| all that mass you used from your arm to charge the battery was
| transferred (obviously not 100%) to the battery. It's not
| perpetual motion. It's just converting mass into energy. Pure
| physics here.
|
| This is the same concept when using water, rocks, sand etc. and
| gravity for batteries. It's just a simple transfer of potential
| energy.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Understand, I was thinking it will only work in narrow
| applications like removing mountain of rocks. Plus saying
| infinity implies some sort of unity
| stetrain wrote:
| It's not perpetual motion, it's just moving things downhill
| with extra steps.
|
| The extra steps are useful for sure. Storing the generated
| energy in batteries works on a route where the net cargo
| movement is downhill even if there are some uphill sections
| along the way.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| They're gaining energy by taking bits of the hill down the
| hill.
| ortusdux wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking#History
|
| _Regenerative braking has been in extensive use on railways for
| many decades. The Baku-Tbilisi-Batumi railway (Transcaucasus
| Railway or Georgian railway) started utilizing regenerative
| braking in the early 1930s. This was especially effective on the
| steep and dangerous Surami Pass. In Scandinavia the Kiruna to
| Narvik electrified railway, known as Malmbanan on the Swedish
| side and Ofoten Line on the Norwegian, carries iron ore on the
| steeply-graded route from the mines in Kiruna, in the north of
| Sweden, down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The
| rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on the way
| down to Narvik, and these trains generate large amounts of
| electricity by regenerative braking, with a maximum recuperative
| braking force of 750 kN. From Riksgransen on the national border
| to the Port of Narvik, the trains use only a fifth of the power
| they regenerate. The regenerated energy is sufficient to power
| the empty trains back up to the national border. Any excess
| energy from the railway is pumped into the power grid to supply
| homes and businesses in the region, and the railway is a net
| generator of electricity._
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(page generated 2023-07-31 23:01 UTC)