Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) - grid storage system

[Lock]

Seen here:
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/ ... 833753.php

Some companies are pushing things uphill besides water to tap gravity for making power.

Bill Gates-backed Energy Cache is shoveling gravel up and down a slope on ski lifts. Gravity Power LLC is pushing water in and out of underground caves. Advanced Rail Energy Storage LLC, headed by James Kelly, the former vice president of transmission and distribution for Southern California Edison Co., sends electric trains between high and low rail yards.

For smaller applications, companies including GE and Siemens are developing batteries. Lithium-ion batteries, such as those produced by Siemens, are receiving the most attention, according to Roberts. Siemens technology already is being tested by Enel SpA, Italy's biggest utility, as a means of storing energy from its solar farms.

Advanced Rail, or ARES, is working a small-scale demonstration facility in Nevada that's due to start in about nine months, and a commercial-scale project in California that may eventually accommodate as much as 300 megawatts of energy. Its Nevada project will probably cost as much as $50 million.

The Nevada project will be connected to the western regional grid that's controlled by the California Independent System Operator, Kelly said. Utilities that belong to the CAL ISO including Southern California Edison Co., Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric Co. "all have contracts with renewable power generators, and an ARES project could store energy from any or all of them," he said.

Advanced Rail here:
http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/

Nice press kit from them that outlines the issues with grid storage needs and various technologies:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/siteninja/site- ... essKit.pdf

Vid on Vimeo that illustrates their system:
http://vimeo.com/48344799

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[dogman dan]

I would think a rail based raising of a weight would have to beat a ski lift. Just seems like the maintenance on a ski lift has got to be more than a set of rails.

I've often thought that while it might be inefficient, it could be worthwhile to pump water back up to the top of large dams located in sunny places with PV power. Lot's of stuff is possibe, it's just going to cost more up front than natural gas or coal is all.

Total costs of burning the fossil fuel is of course a different story.

[Njay]

I've often thought that while it might be inefficient, it could be worthwhile to pump water back up to the top of large dams located in sunny places with PV power.

That is actually being done here in Portugal, but with wind power, generated during the night.

[flathill]

check out lightsail
In berkeley
Regenerative compressed air storage with a liquid piston
Some density as lead acid

The ex ceo of calpine is now at a concrete weight in a water tube energy storage startup

This is a hot space if you are graduating
All will be coming home and plugging in at the same time after work
Big problem not really if we were smart or should i say the grid was
but peaker plants are $$$ so expect grid storage to be big
Remember the e energy industry is the largest industry on spaceship earth

[Drunkskunk]

I think they should tie grid storage to municipal water. they already pump water into towers to regulate the pressure. they could build more and bigger towers to hold extra capacity, then drain the water back as they needed the extra capacity in both water or through turbines for power.

[dogman dan]

That would take a lot of water. Odd to realize it, but the city water tanks wouldn't hold nearly enough.

However, it falls under the do it all approach for sure. This problem needs to die of the thousand cuts. So do it all. It should be illegal to build a new house bigger than 2000 sq feet without 1kw of pv, Illegal to build a new gas station or shopping outlet without a EV charging station, etc. Sure it will be a drop in the bucket, but it beats holding the bucket upside down another 50 years.

[LockH]

[BURP]... Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) in news again... seen here:

Simple Physics Solutions to Storing Renewable Energy:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/ ... le-energy/

More than 5,000 miles away from North Rhine-Westphalia, in southern California, there’s buzz about rather plain-looking railcars that don’t transport people or goods or really go anywhere at all. They’re owned by a Santa Barbara-based startup called Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES), and they’re another contender in the grid storage market.

When electricity is cheap, ARES electric locomotives draw power from the grid to haul heavy railcars up a hill. Once they’re at the top, the potential energy they embody acts as storage. When the grid needs electricity, the brakes release and the cars begin to inch downhill. The motors that hauled them up turn into generators, controlling the descent and generating power as they go. It’s essentially the same system that recharges the batteries of a Toyota Prius or Tesla Model S when the driver hit the brakes.

ARES has set up a quarter-scale demonstration of its rail energy storage system in Tehachapi, California.

[liveforphysics]

If you haul up 1 million kilograms (2.2Million lbs) up 1,000 meters (3,280ft) above starting elevation, it's 9800MJ or ~2.7MWh.

This just doesn't seem meaningful or worth the hassle to add a bunch of moving parts to do something more efficiently and fit 2.7MWh into a small shed. (3*3 grid of Tesla packs 3 high for 27packs total).

[Hanssing]

If you haul up 1 million kilograms (2.2Million lbs) up 1,000 meters (3,280ft) above starting elevation, it's 9800MJ or ~2.7MWh.

This just doesn't seem meaningful or worth the hassle to add a bunch of moving parts to do something more efficiently and fit 2.7MWh into a small shed. (3*3 grid of Tesla packs 3 high for 27packs total).

Do away with the rail, and use water in a pipe - ohh wait thats pumped storage which is known to work.......

I think it would be easiere to control evaporation in a closed structure than bulding moving electrinics with concrete-loads and all. But I guess you dont get grants and invstors to pay for known technology

[liveforphysics]

Pumped storage is still so lossy vs batteries, neither seems very appealing when a shallow cycled battery array could be easily scaled to any energy storage needs and can last for multiple decades of daily instant power demand with extremely high efficiency in and out.

Even rail cars with falling weights or water has a power delivery delay as gravity must accelerate either of them to transform the potential gravitational energy into kinetic energy to be then transformed into electricity.

Long term there is no place or need for a centralized distributed grid, just solar roofing on each building and batteries integrated into the basement or batteries composing the walls of the structure.

Short term, bi-directional onboard EV chargers with coms over power lines to load shed and/or grid buffer as needed to eliminate peaker plants seems more useful and less resource intensive than any other grid buffering proposal I've seen yet.

[Hanssing]

Even rail cars with falling weights or water has a power delivery delay as gravity must accelerate either of them to transform the potential gravitational energy into kinetic energy to be then transformed into electricity.

Sorry but thats nonsense. The spinning reserves in a hydroplant for gridstability is comparable to a conventional powerplant - and they are much better than solid-state for controlling the grid. The overload factor is 700% or higher for shortterm, meaning "ridethroughs" etc. are stable - not so for solid state.

The time-constants for gridcontrol are also much longer, and your thoughts about delays are of by an order of magnitude or more.

If in dobt that hydro works for the grid, as sole supplier, take a look at norways grid:
http://www.statnett.no/Kraftsystemet/Da ... g-forbruk/

They practically only use hydro, and exports a lot to neighbors. Essenstially they are a battery for vind/solar as they also imports at times of surplus, by just turning off some of their hydroplants.

[liveforphysics]

Power delivery from generators only happens if they are turning, or in this case, if your train is rolling on the track (or water falling through the turbine.)

What I was poorly trying to express, is that battery based systems can sit idle storing energy nearly loss-lessly, then in a fraction of a millisecond begin supplying MW or GW of power.

[Hanssing]

Yes, and my point is that msec response is irrelevant for grid control - minutes are needed, once you have spinning iron.

[Hillhater]

Whilst im sure sloping rail potential energy storage works and can be successfully demonstrated, i cannot imagine the size , weight, and scale of such a system to give any meaningful amount of grid scale storage ?
Compared to hydro storage systems that move millions of tonnes of water up thousands of meters vertical, a similar capacity rail system would seem to be highly impractical.