This is a fascinating project that I was unaware of:
http://insights.globalspec.com/article/2550/an-energy-storage-project-gains-traction
"In simple terms, the system will work this way: A fleet of electric trains will haul flatcars weighing 230 tons each up a 5.5-mile-long incline to an elevation some 3,000 feet above their starting point. When grid stabilization services are needed—say at times of fluctuating output from renewable energy resources—the trains will roll downhill at speeds of just under 19 mph. On their descent they will use regenerative braking to generate electricity and deliver it to the grid."
Here's the company: http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/
This would make a fascinating but at the same time really boring model railroad!
Dave G.
Quite interesting. What is the source of the electricity necessary to lift the trains up the grade? A renewable energy source? What is the response should the renewable energy source fail and all of the trains are at the bottom of the grade? Fire the boilers up?
Johnny
Basically a stored energy power plant. There are plants out there that use the same general idea. During low power demand cycles water is pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir. When demand increases the gates on the upper reservoir are opened and water flows through hydroturbines to generate electricity.
Editor Emeritus, This Week at Amtrak
Deggesty Quite interesting. What is the source of the electricity necessary to lift the trains up the grade? A renewable energy source? What is the response should the renewable energy source fail and all of the trains are at the bottom of the grade? Fire the boilers up?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
I don’t think that “cost effective” is part of the concept. This is all about coercion and a sense of duty on the part of the consumer. This kind of storage is only needed with energy sources that are unreliable and intermittent, such as wind and solar. The frictional losses in running railcar loads up and down amount to a loss of efficiency, which adds to the cost of electricity. Renewable energy alone adds to the cost of electricity. It all amounts to paying rent on your carbon footprint.
Now we have a use for the Virginian Railroad line owned by NS
Strictly opinion but it sounds a lot like another pie in the sky idea. Lots of drawbacks to running rail cars on a ten percent grade, not to mention the needed infrastructure.
Norm
Euclid I don’t think that “cost effective” is part of the concept. This is all about coercion and a sense of duty on the part of the consumer. This kind of storage is only needed with energy sources that are unreliable and intermittent, such as wind and solar. The frictional losses in running railcar loads up and down amount to a loss of efficiency, which adds to the cost of electricity. Renewable energy alone adds to the cost of electricity. It all amounts to paying rent on your carbon footprint.
Murphy Siding I bet it's a lot more cost effective to do this with water in a pipe, as the post above discusses.
Methinks it depends on the geography. To efficiently use stored water, one really needs a fairly sharp gradient - lots of elevation in a fairly short distance - with enough space at the top for a suitable reservoir. I saw one plan years ago for Storm King Mountain (IIRC) above the Hudson River in NY.
This plan, if it's going to work, would need a fair distance of consistent grade - thus would be better for relatively flatter ground, albeit with that 10% grade.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Euclid ... This kind of storage is only needed with energy sources that are unreliable and intermittent, such as wind and solar. ...
... This kind of storage is only needed with energy sources that are unreliable and intermittent, such as wind and solar. ...
Power storage facilities have existed for decades to deal with demand peaks and valleys. They also can sub for power plant failures.
MidlandMikePower storage facilities have existed for decades to deal with demand peaks and valleys. They also can sub for power plant failures.
More than a few small hydro facilities regularly serve as surge providers. One near here has been that way for years.
Murphy Siding Euclid I don’t think that “cost effective” is part of the concept. This is all about coercion and a sense of duty on the part of the consumer. This kind of storage is only needed with energy sources that are unreliable and intermittent, such as wind and solar. The frictional losses in running railcar loads up and down amount to a loss of efficiency, which adds to the cost of electricity. Renewable energy alone adds to the cost of electricity. It all amounts to paying rent on your carbon footprint. To quote Lucy VanPelt from A Charlie Brown Christmas: "It's all run by a big eastern sydicate don't you know". The power grid is all connected. There have been power storage facilities around to deal with demand peaks and valleys since before wind and solar started being usedto produce wholesale electricity. That carbon footprint ghost must live under your bed. On the surface, the idea of doing this function with a railroad seems like re-inventing the wheel in a more complicated, expensive fashion.
To quote Lucy VanPelt from A Charlie Brown Christmas: "It's all run by a big eastern sydicate don't you know". The power grid is all connected. There have been power storage facilities around to deal with demand peaks and valleys since before wind and solar started being usedto produce wholesale electricity. That carbon footprint ghost must live under your bed. On the surface, the idea of doing this function with a railroad seems like re-inventing the wheel in a more complicated, expensive fashion.
Sure, there have always been fluctuations in power demand, but that is not what this is about.
I think you should take a look at the video in the OP. He says:
“Everyone believes that we have a mission to reduce our carbon footprint, to help with global warming, to stop burning fossil fuel… But we also have a dilemma in doing that. The dilemma is that renewable technologies are fundamentally intermittent. You only get power out of windmills when the wind is blowing. You only get power out of solar facilities when the sun is shining. But our demand for electricity is much more stable and we can’t tolerate having the lights go off when the wind doesn’t blow.”
Actually, here in Nevada it's all run by Warren Buffett (aka Berkshire Hathaway.)
This is a way to salvage electrical power that would otherwise be surplus to requirements at the instant of generation. The wind blows when it blows. Bright sunshine provides lots of kilowatts, but moonlight doesn't. And if you don't use it, you lose it. 60 percent of something is a big improvement over 0% of the same thing.
So, what happens when its midnight, hot and the wind is calm. The plant operators will shift the natural gas burning gas turbines from maximum efficiency to maximum output, just as they do now.
The electric railroad might seem to be a poorer choice than pumped storage, except that, here in the dessicated desert, there's no water to spare for pumping up a mountain.
This isn't the first time this idea has hit these forums. I tossed it in several years back, purely as a 'what if' idea. Nice to see that someone with sufficient money has the same idea.
Chuck (Clark County, NV. resident)
My first thought was April Fools a month late!
EuclidEveryone believes that we have a mission to reduce our carbon footprint, to help with global warming, to stop burning fossil fuel…
Everyone? I don't think that's correct.
Norm48327 ARES Pitch Man said: Everyone believes that we have a mission to reduce our carbon footprint, to help with global warming, to stop burning fossil fuel…
ARES Pitch Man said: Everyone believes that we have a mission to reduce our carbon footprint, to help with global warming, to stop burning fossil fuel…
ARES Pitch Man said:
Norm48327 Railroad cars are 12,000.00 to 50,000.00 per unit now if they had stored cars like grainers or coal cars they might be able to collect the storage and the generating use of these cars Strictly opinion but it sounds a lot like another pie in the sky idea. Lots of drawbacks to running rail cars on a ten percent grade, not to mention the needed infrastructure.
Here is the stored resouvour at Niagara Falls- BTW the NYC grapevive went through here along the South Shore of Lake Ontario
I think some are missing the point of this enterprise, perhaps not understanding the concept of stored energy and "ancillary services" as described on the ARES Nevada project page. It's an attempt to fill a hole in the spectrum of sources feeding the power grid, not a fix for everything.
As far as the infrastructure and comparing it to analogous hydro, I think the point here is that the rail infrastructure is to some extent off-the-shelf, modular and semi-temporary. It's out in the middle of the desert, so there are no mountains to move or rivers to redirect. If it doesn't pan out or become profitable, they can bascially dissassemble it and take it away. Not so easy with a hydro installation. Read the plan.
Has anyone visited the operational test site at Tehachapi?
Also, too much politics injected into this discussion: no one is coercing anybody to do anything surrounding this project. If these guys didn't think they ultimately could make money with this, they wouldn't be doing it.
The load on the eletrical grid has a very well known variable cycle and has been defined as base load which is the load that is present between midnight and about six AM. then there is the cyclic load that starts to grow at about 6 am and peaks about 3 pm and declines to zero at midnight. There is also a temperature variable load for heat and air conditioning which of course varies with the time of year and weather. Nuclear plants are optimum for base load. High initial cost, low fuel cost, reliable and most efficient at full load. Coal and oil are generaly used to operate from 20% to 100 % of their capacity. Have carbon and polution issues, lower initial cost than nuclear and higher fuel cost than nuclear. After these come the gas fired combination units that have a gas turbine generator and a heat recovery boiler steam generator. These are good for cycling and have higher maintenance costs, and higher operational costs. So historically, the grid has dispatched the various mix of generation to keep the total cost of electricity as low as possible. Run lowest cost units first, then run units based on cost. It is expensive to to supply that peak kilowatt since you may only need it for five days a year. Would you build a plant that is only needed for five years? These used to be older units in the last years before they are retired.
The wind turbines have no fuel costs, but they are not a secure source of electricity. Ditto for Solar. Some utility's tried a time of day pricing and found that during a heat wave, people would decide to do without air conditioning for the first two days because of the cost and then when they got real hot would say damm it, turn it on creating a extremely sharp needle peak load. Until recently, electric meters were not designed for time of day (TOD) metering. But how the public will accept TOD rates remains to be seen. Will they be willing to shift load to save money? So the utilities had to aggregate the useage and select the sources to keep the rates as low as possible and still make a profit. Its not an easy job. You see the stories about Amtrak pricing based on the demand. Same idea. An empty seat is lost revenue. Additional trains cost more money. Same with airlines and motels. Sorry I'm a little windy here.
So the need for peaking power is real and this is a possible source that sounds promising.
SledDawgAlso, too much politics injected into this discussion: no one is coercing anybody to do anything surrounding this project. If these guys didn't think they ultimately could make money with this, they wouldn't be doing it.
Gee. You mean they are actually going to do this on their own dime and not seek massive federal subsidies? Doubtful.
How many of these projects, solar, wind, etc are profitable right out of the box? Not many. Yes, politics will be involved. They will be asking for money.
Norm48327 Gee. You mean they are actually going to do this on their own dime and not seek massive federal subsidies? Doubtful. How many of these projects, solar, wind, etc are profitable right out of the box? Not many. Yes, politics will be involved. They will be asking for money.
If they ask anyone for money it will probably be NVEnergy, which has a virtual power monopoly here (Nevada) and is, therefore, the only game in town.
We also have another purely local oddity to the power generation scheme - Hoover Dam. Hoover releases water to meet irrigation and downstream distribution requirements, and uses it to spin generators as it goes. Base load? Peak load? It could be a sunny day with gale force winds and hydropower will hit the grid because Calexico is entitled to XXX acre-feet today.
Given the realities of power availability and useage here in Southern Nevada, this is a lot more likely to show an immediate return, and is a LOT quicker and easier to buiid, than almost any other power storage or generation scheme.
My electric bill wishes them well.
Chuck (Clark County, NV, resident)
SledDawgAlso, ... no one is coercing anybody to do anything surrounding this project. If these guys didn't think they ultimately could make money with this, they wouldn't be doing it.
If you mean they will make money through the free market economics of offering a better and cheaper product that the public will prefer, I think that assumption is incorrect. They will make money alright precisely because of the coercion that forces the public to buy their more expensive product.
This most certainly is about coercion and regulatory mandates. That is what makes it feasible. Government decides how we all must live and what we must pay to accomplish their vision. The vision starts with the regulatory banning of coal. That is coercion. Listen to Jim Kelly his video on this page:
http://www.aresnorthamerica.com/
He says this: “We believe that ARES is an integral part of state and national energy policy.” He says we all have to pull together and use this technology to fight global warming.
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Renewable energy is a lot more costly than fossil fuel energy. But people are led to believe that renewable energy is cheaper, under the mistaken premise that solar and wind are free. They overlook the capital cost of plant and equipment, and its replacement cost when it wears out. The intermittent nature of renewables further drives up the plant and equipment cost by requiring systems that will store and release energy to smooth out the intermittent nature of renewable production. This railroad system is one such storage system.
Remember, this railcar system does not produce any energy. It is just another component in the production of renewable energy. Actually this storage system itself will use energy that would not be used without this storage system. When it stores energy and returns it later, it consumes 15% of what it stores, and then return only 85% of what it started with.
The concept information includes the size of a typical plant and the energy storage potential. How many of these plants would the country need for a national system? I would guess that the answer is at least in the thousands.
What would be the average plant cost for land, permits, excavation and grading, track, electric catenary, electric locomotive, ballasted railcars, controls, braking system, storage buildings, ballast weights, ballast weight handling equipment, etc.?
What would be the annual operating cost for operation and maintenance? The system of track and switches will require daily inspection and maintenance. So will the catenary, locomotives, railcars, ballast weight handlers, buildings, and control systems. All of this will require maintenance and repair. Snow will have to be removed. What will be the total downtime per year for this maintenance work?
Renewable energy has absolutely nothing to do with lowering the cost of electricity as a market alternative to fossil fuel energy. That is not its purpose. The purpose is to deliver a form of energy that has been deemed necessary to meet new requirements established by government.
This adds cost to electricity. The added cost will force (coerce) consumers to use less electricity. Today’s $100 monthly electric bill will soon cost $500. Something will have to yield, and it will be in the reduction of consumption. Indeed, consuming less is an intended part of the objective here. Anybody in the renewable energy movement will tell you that we all consume too much of everything.
EuclidRemember, this railcar system does not produce any energy. It is just another component in the production of renewable energy. Actually this storage system itself will use energy that would not be used without this storage system. When it stores energy and returns it later, it consumes 15% of what it stores, and then return only 85% of what it started with.
Which is fine since energy needs are not constant throughout the day.
Electroliner explained this 1000x better than I can a few posts below yours.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
A couple points. Hydro is used for peaking. What usually occurs is when hydro is not needed the generators are already running at grid frequency. So if power demand increases above base load -- first the grid has a voltage drop that commands the hydro turbine governor to open the pentstock and the turbine that is running changes from a motor to generator.
The weight of the sled cars will indicate that the rail will have to be very heavy rail. ( 141 ? ). There would be no reason to climb the hill at 9% but could climb on a loop at a more useable 1-2 % .
This could mean quite a few ACS-64 type electric motors. Regeneration certainly is a proven technical ability.
This is not free electricity as capital costs and operating costs will be an ongoing expense. Repaying capital and interest.
Here at Hoover, Hydro isn't used for peaking. It's a byproduct of agricultural water distribution, and, like wind or solar, happens when it happens, not when the grid managers would like it. (I was at Hoover Dam this morning, and asked the Ranger at the information desk that specific question.)
Yes, it will cost money to capture and store that power for use when it IS needed. It strikes me that using off-the-shelf railway technology to capture and store it is far more practical than any other system that can meet the realities of life in the Southern Nevada desert. (Priced batteries lately?) What might be useful in a rain forest or in the Frozen North is irrelevant to the present experiment. This might prove to be a mistake - in which case the infrastructure will be recycled elsewhere and we'll have another 'Rails-to-trails' right of way like the one I hiked this morning while looking for signs of the former rail operation at Himix.
Euclid ... Renewable energy is a lot more costly than fossil fuel energy. But people are led to believe that renewable energy is cheaper, under the mistaken premise that solar and wind are free. They overlook the capital cost of plant and equipment, and its replacement cost when it wears out. The intermittent nature of renewables further drives up the plant and equipment cost by requiring systems that will store and release energy to smooth out the intermittent nature of renewable production. This railroad system is one such storage system. ...
...
Fossil fuel plants also have huge capital costs, maintenance costs and replacement costs, as well as constant fuel costs, not to mention health and environmental costs. In Germany, where they have greatly increasd renewables, the wholesale price of electricity has been going down for years, although the tax to cover the conversion is high. American renewable construction has been largely financed by private investors taking advantage of tax incentives. One of the reasons that American power rates have not been skyrocketing, is that utilities have largely cancelled plans for billion dollar coal plants.
zugmann Euclid Remember, this railcar system does not produce any energy. It is just another component in the production of renewable energy. Actually this storage system itself will use energy that would not be used without this storage system. When it stores energy and returns it later, it consumes 15% of what it stores, and then return only 85% of what it started with. Electroliner explained this 1000x better than I can a few posts below yours.
Euclid Remember, this railcar system does not produce any energy. It is just another component in the production of renewable energy. Actually this storage system itself will use energy that would not be used without this storage system. When it stores energy and returns it later, it consumes 15% of what it stores, and then return only 85% of what it started with.
John Kneiling had a great explanation of power plant functions and economics - including diagrams - in this article:
"Coal: Going, Going, Gone - How coal railroads can run downhill at a profit", by Kneiling, John G., from Trains, Oct. 1967, pg. 37 &etc.
- Paul North.
This seems like quite the investment for a power source that's going to provide some peak power for only 17-1/2 minutes per day. (5.5 miles at 19 m.p.h.) Aren't we talking about a $10-$20 million investment?
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