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I’ve stated it before on Hackaday but one of the most interesting engineering challenges posed to me this year was “how could you store enough energy to power a decent portion of a home for several hours without using batteries, all while staying within the size of a typical suburban plot?” [Quint Builds] attempts something up that alley by using solar power to pump water up onto his roof and later releasing it for power generation. (Video, embedded below.)
It’s incredible to see lights come on powered by water alone but also sobering to realize just how much water you’d need to power a typical home. Perhaps if [Quint] upgrades, he can swap out the small motor for a larger 3D printed water pump.
A lot of work for small amount of power, don’t compete with nuclear power.
It’s small scale hydro storage. That much water elevated to 10m stores about 5Wh of energy, about as much as two li-ion cells.
Not quite; a reasonably good Li-ion 18650 battery stores 3350mAh at 3.6V nominal, so that’s 12Wh per cell. Also, this battery has a cycle efficiency of over 95%, if the current is reasonable, while the pumped hydro has a cycle efficiency of about 25%, probably a lot less with this really crappy pump (it gets hot for a reason).
It may have been a fun build, but it’s very impractical, and economically absolutely unviable.
“while the pumped hydro has a cycle efficiency of about 25%, probably a lot less with this really crappy pump (it gets hot for a reason).”
I agree that the efficiency of this setup is likely near zero, but why are you mentioning 25%? Pumped hydro normally has a cycle efficiency pretty comparable to lithium-ion batteries at grid scales. The battery *itself* has a cycle efficiency of ~95%-ish, but that’s like comparing it to the actual energy difference between “water high” and “water low” – so by that metric the cycle efficiency is 100% for hydro!
The losses come in how you’re moving the water, just like the losses for a lithium ion battery come in how you regulate and deliver the power. The whole “95%” number typically ignores those losses. Typically at grid scale, both of them are around 80% round-trip efficiency at a system level.
A few feet of elevation won’t give you any efficiency at the turbine.
And the water pressure is dependent on the water level in the bucket because of weight.
“Pumped hydro normally has a cycle efficiency pretty comparable to lithium-ion batteries at grid scales. ”
This guy’s setup is not grid scale and a completely useless metric.
” The battery *itself* has a cycle efficiency of ~95%-ish, but that''s like comparing it to the actual energy difference between "water high" and "water low" – so by that metric the cycle efficiency is 100% for hydro!”
“The losses come in how you''re moving the water, just like the losses for a lithium ion battery come in how you regulate and deliver the power.”
What? No. The efficiency of a flashlight I plug into the battery is irrelevant.
Assuming even 100% efficiency, 14.2kJ is enough to generate 23W for…10 minutes.
He will never recoup the energy his computer wasted editing, rendering, and transcoding the video. The guy is an absolute moron.
The author himself says that it’s totally impractical, and economically absolutely unviable.
It’s just a little experiment to show how pumped storage power plants works, with a real example.
55gallons at 10m is nowhere near that. It’s gallons x psi (10m is 20psi on a good day) /1714, that gives you HP at .64, then you multiply that by 745w/hp and get 500w’s of power, not 5,000.
My god, the mental gymnastics you have to perform to cope with imperial measures.Makes you look stupid.55 gallons = 200 liters = 200 kg.energy stored is 200 kg x 10 m x 10 N/kg = 20,000 J. Or 5.6 Wh. Yeesh.
For the unenlightened who want to follow the units longhand: a joule is a newton-meter.A newton is a kg-m/s^2.The 10 N/kg is the force due to gravitational acceleration, dimensionally identical to m/s^2.
What the heck is “500 w’s” anyway? Doesn’t look like any unit of power. And, anyway, we really want to know energy stored, not power.
While we’re at it: 10 m of water head x 1000 kg / m^3 x 10 N/kg = 100 kN/m^2 = 100 kPa = 1 atmosphere. Last I heard, that was around 15 psi. Not 20 psi.
But, heck, the American gallon is smaller than a regular one. Maybe there’s a stunted American-size pound too.
Interesting idea. There’s a place in North Wales that does it on a somewhat larger scale.https://
Also Ludington, Michigan that’s been in operation since the 1970s.
It’s more about storing energy rather than producing it. Pumped water storage is actually a preferred means for storing energy generated by both Solar and Nuclear.https://world-nuclear /information-library/current-and-future-generation/electricity-and-energy-storage.aspx
It makes me wonder, do we utilize our water towers to generate any electricity?
Probably not, the water is elevated to achieve pressure and you are going to loose pressure if the water is ran through a generator.
I believe his intentions aren’t much on the economy of this, but to show his kids and his subscribers how to store solar power. If we wanted to really curb his power bill, it would be better to get some lead acid batteries.
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