I found this interesting.
Interesting idea/solution to an age-old problem. I wonder what that does to the overall efficiency of the power plant in general. I’d imagine hauling the cars up the hill consumes a good deal of the energy the plant produces. For a given size wind farm, how much bigger would they have to make the wind farm to be able to make this really work? Wind and solar farms already take up a huge enough amount of real estate as it is.
I’m also thinking the efficiency would have a lot to do with the friction between the rails and the wheels, so they’d need to keep the tracks clear at all times and the wheels and rails as clean as possible. Maybe it would work better in a controlled environment, like if they enclosed the whole thing in a long building or tunnel.
looks kind of like a “rube goldberg” device to me. decades ago, union electric built a reservoir on top of a mountain in Missouri. they pumped water up into it during off peak hours and then let it run down through turbines when demand was high.
one day it sprung a leak and part of the dam collapsed so all the water flooded the surrounding countryside. wonder what a runaway traiin would do??
charlie
What’s wrong with just using batteries? This makes as much sense as electrifying a steam railroad so you could put heating coils in the firebox.
Maybe they could put giant sails on the locos so the wind could push them up the hill…[:-^]
The energy losses going through the motor/generator and back are too great. Using excess electrical energy in ‘off hours’ to pump water up to a reservoir is done at the Grand Coulee dam. The water drains back down through the turbine/generator to augment ‘peak’ needs. At lot simpler than running running a powered counterweight up a track and then collecting electrical energy on the way down(with all of the motor/generator losses).
Jim
Actually, in my neck of the cactus (as the local weather weenie puts it) this would make sense. We have vast acreage of desert, lots of wind, but water is in VERY short supply. Pumped systems work when there’s water to pump, but not where lawns are discouraged and rainfall doesn’t happen.
I agree that some kind of cog/rack system would be more practical than adhesion. (Nevada has no shortage of steep mountains!) The main thing is to see this as a surge leveler. When the sun is up and the breeze is blowing the little ballasted power trucks should all be either at the top of the hill or climbing to get there. Come sunset, they start down - one or a few at a time. Hopefully, they won’t all reach the bottom before the natural-gas turbogenerators kick in to handle the base load.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with hydropower, and LOTS of rain)