what an elegant implementation of gravitational power storage! making it so the resetting of the weight is done simply by turning a handle is brilliant.
@@jonbutcher9805 You'll have to put energy into the system to get (light)energy out. You can't just have this system run itself automatically AND tap energy out of the system. That would mean you have created something known as a free-energy-generator. I'd rather opt for a version, where I can grab the top with my hands and use my bodyweight to pull/push it all the way down. I don't know how heavy this weight is, but I guess it's less than my 90kg. That way I can recharge the system way faster, which is very handy for emergencylighting, I think. But this version is (obviously) built to be so easy to use, even a kid can do it. Or someone in a wheelchair. Or someone who's too lazy to get out of bed, a.k.a. "a student".😂
Could you explain the power input for all the universe energy runnings ?...so if equal in equal out what is the equal in for all the current energy in our universe what is the power source...thank you..
@@jshaw4757 it is simple. All matter is energy. All energy is matter. They are the same. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It is simple converted from one form to the other and back again. As per Einstein's equation E= MC squared
👍 There's also the clever device that was designed for camping-type settings, which is a flywheel driven by a string with a weight .. the weight takes approx. 0h30 to fall, due to the gearing, and the flywheel generates enough energy to charge a cell phone, or light an LED. And is easily reset by manually raising the weight again to begin another descent.
I can't help thinking there is a lot more friction in this type of system, as cool as it is, than simply suspending a weight on a cable going over a pulley. I'd be really interested to test and compare the relative efficiency of different gravity storage systems so might try to build this and find out
Wow Rob that philapine university device blew me away. I was already thinking of the stepper motors I have as your omnibus was playing out but that idea of flipping it over really is the genius idea! You could swop out the weight for water or dirt sand to increase portability too
They have those. I can't remember the third world country that instituted them unfortunately. Apparently students weren't doing well because they could not study at night since no one could afford to burn lamps or candles for that purpose. Gravity lamps were the answer.
Love your channel and enthusiasm, and I'm sure that Watt, Franklin, Edison, Newton, Savery and Tesla among others would be impressed. Keep it up, your channel gives people things to be excited about. Thanks, from the US.
That's a good way to store solar energy for use at night electric motors slowly lift heavyweight in the day and then produce electricity at night on their way down like a 55-gallon drum full of concrete or several
Great video. I read somewhere that transitional electromechanical tower clocks (between full mechanical and full electrical drives) that incorporated a weight in the design could maintain time during a power outage with the "stored" energy in weight.
Look up weight driven grandfather's clock. They had weights on chains. The weights were raised by pulling the chain down and the clock would run for days on end. If I'm remembering correctly, my grandmother told me it ran for 24 days at which point I thought; why not 30? Basically, if you made a point to pull the chains up every two or three weeks, it would run until it wore out.
Seriously? Sorry, just joking. But ehm, this old technology is known by everyone, i would assume. I mean: Everyone knows a grandfather clock. And those who don't have been born in a place on earth where they never had any technology from the recent past. Tribes on islands still using bow and arrow, yes, i can imagine they would not know this technology. but somebody who is able to put a comment underneath a youtube video, i assume such a person does already know about Grandfather clocks. And every clock has a different running time. It depends on the clock, the length of the pendulum etc. If the clock has a gear train that can handle a pendulum that swings every second, then it may take a very long time before the weight reaches the end. 24 days may be possible. I dunno. Shorter pendulum will go faster. I got 2 of em. An oldy with a simple bell sounding every half hour and it strikes the hours. And i got a bigger one, with 3 weights. And in it it has the Westminster Chime, sounding every quarter of the hour. First quarter is obviously the first part of the melody. Second has 2 parts. Third 3 parts. And the strike of the hour has all 4 including the deep sounding bell sound indicating the hour. So 12 o clock it sounds 12 times. Warmink is the producer of that one. And if i am not mistaken the other one is from the same maker. Dutch clocks. Friese Staartklok is what the simple one is called. And the other one i believe is called Amsterdamse Staartklok. But i am not too sure about the last one being called Amsterdamse Staartklok. Anyway, they both also have a moonphase indicator. And the big one with the 3 weights has a handle so you can turn on or off the chime bit. So you can turn it off during sleeping time. And it resets itself when you turn it back on. The other one does not have that feature. It will chime, unless you take off the weight or block it from falling. Plus, when you take it off or block the weight from falling it will not keep up. And so, if you reinstall the weight, chances are that the chimes will not count the correct hour. Like say: its 3 o clock but it could chime 4 times, or 2 times. You have to reset it manually to get it back to the right order. Anyways, neat technology. Very old. And i would expect somebody who knows his or her way around the kitchen on the internet to already be familiar with this kind of technology. @@scotttovey
@@bertjesklotepino "but somebody who is able to put a comment underneath a youtube video, i assume such a person does already know about Grandfather clocks." That's a bad assumption. Recently, in a video, it was reported that a certain generation had to be shown how to use a rotary dial telephone. This tech is not as old as the Grandfather's clock. Remember the air Jordan tennis shoe? The one's where you pump the soles up so that you are walking on a cushion of air. They certainly did sound revolutionary to me at the time. Then one day, I happened to go to a museum that had a historical display. There was a sign that listed some past inventions. One of the items listed on that sign was a shoe that was made in the 1800's that had a pump up sole. Not so knew after all. People make assumptions all the time. Sometimes the assumption is accurate. Most of the time, the assumption is wrong. Here's one I recently learned that surprised me. The truism that human pregnancy lasts 9 months; is in fact, false. Given a normal pregnancy with a full gestation period, birth always occurs in the tenth month. Assuming that people know things is the quickest and easiest way to destroy a nation. Take the often used, don't be lazy rebuke of "Do your own research". That statement is predicated on the assumption that a person which is able to type words in a text box on a computer connected to the internet, also has the same search engine skills as the one claiming to have specialized knowledge of bad actors. Not only is that a bad assumption, it is an extremely selfish one. In order for one to find the given bit of knowledge that another person has, one must know two things; 1) The exact key words that were used to find that bit of knowledge. 2) The exact search engine that was used, and that search engine must be in the same state that it was in when the individual with the special knowledge found the special knowledge. I used Google for several years to do searches to learn PHP. At some point, having forgotten a specific way to do something, I went to Google and typed in the key words I remembered that brought up the information I needed. Two things had changed. 1) The PHP website had deleted a lot of the comments that users posted on the website for no apparent reason, thus the information that had previously existed, was no longer there. 2) The search results did not have as many links to the PHP website as it did before. Google changed their algorithm. I will often state the obvious for no other reason than the fact that very few people will. The end result of very few people stating the obvious is that the younger generation is now deceived into believing that poverty inducing socialism and communism, are more beneficial than wealth generating capitalism. I also do it because I at 62 years of age, I can look back on my life and I realize that there were a whole lot of "obvious" things that no one was willing to teach me when I was young, and I did not see those "obvious" things, until I heard them mentioned in RU-vid videos. I cannot see what's on your computer monitor. You cannot see what's on my computer monitor. The only safe assumption is that we both are using a web browser to surf the internet. Any assumption beyond that, is a bad assumption.
Weight is weight, and the benefit is that sand and water can be divided and moved in smaller portions, which increases the versatility of such a system. The real winner here in my opinion is water, because so many other means exist for moving it. Meaning your solar, wind, water generation, or any energy harvesting mechanism you think of, can move water for you. Add the assistance of a ram pump to move a portion of your water, and you really have some efficency.
It reminds me of something I read about, there's a village somewhere on top of a large hill and they have a system for pumping water to the top for drinking by using the waste sewerage and rain water to that fills a carrier but I can't remember if it turns a pump directly or is hooked up to a generator but that's how they get the fresh water up the hill/mountain
- very funny... (if the rainwater is already up there, just use that it is already "fresh" and "free) - "jet pumps" use falling water to pump SOME up to a greater height - there are losses however (thermodynamics isn't imaginary)... As described it would be a famine inducing construction...
Don't forget that this doesn't need to be limited to generating electricity. It can also be used to physically move/power machinery. Like for drilling, cutting, milling, etc perhaps even for some novel forms of transporatation, connected to a transmission, drive shaft and axles.
Very good tip indeed. This reminds me of blacksmith bellows. Such device could be connected to a fan blowing air into furnace, and you just need to crank it from time to time, then use it's stored energy to blow air. Love this idea 😁
Those children did an awesome job, the fact that we don't have low cost energy, with all of the nearly free energy that surrounds us , is an injustice to humanity.
Rob, your such a lovely Person!! Preserving our knowledge inherited throughout the history from people like you For a FREE WORLD It’s just Priceless.. Thanks for this, It’s so much fun learning with you”
Hey Rob, I have had an idea bouncing around my head for years. I am planning on building myself a house one day and part of the plan would include a two storey garage. You drive the car into the first level onto a platform that lowers with the weight of the car thus generating energy from some kind of system like this. As you drive off counterweights raise the platform back to the first level. Imagine this used on a larger scale in a multi storey car park!
Or, a better crazy idea... To use wind and solar power to raise an entire house on jack-up stilts - and extract power on the return.. (Flexible plumbing needed - as is a sliding entrance shaft or drawbridge) - no unnecessary ballast weights or towers needed. (Your 2 -story car shed idea makes no real sense (Rube Goldberg Device), as the energy expended driving up the hill is merely returned on the downside - only really useful if a car hoist is needed without any power source - other than the car engine.)
@@kadmow Those Rube Goldberg devices have been shown to work ya know? I get your point though, its not free energy. It is just exchanging petrol energy in your car for electrical energy in the house. IRL energy exchanges always include losses and in this case would be unnecessary
Philippine gravity generator is awesome. Imagine one with 3 or more arranged so that a smaller rotation would bring a Fresh weight into play. Instead of rotating a full 180 degrees, maybe just rotate 30 degrees or less depending on how many "spokes" there are...and a new stack becomes verticle and unlocks that weight to drop. The final foot of drop could even power the next rotation of the stacks.
I thouught about this same thing with two 55 gallons barrels on a tower filled by a low draw pump to run a gear reduced generator …. You cover some great stuff
I've had this idea in my head that, one day, I'd build a prototype of a universal gym that's had all its weight hooked into a system that uses the weights as a gravity generator... and I think that this just added a whole new chapter to the book. Imagine working out for an hour and then using the 1000kgs that you just lifted to cook your dinner. Anyone up to a design/build project?
Lifting a 100kg weight 1m requires about 1kJ of work/energy. It takes about 4kJ to heat 1l of water by 1 degree Celsius. Assuming the water starts at room temperature you need to lift your 100kg weight more than 320 times to make a small pot of water cook.
WTF? You just destroyed 2 decades of dreaming with your stupid science and facts! You should've just agreed and then watched me build the thing. Ok, ,maybe making dinner was a bit fanciful, but how about 2 slices of toast?
This is a brilliant way to use human power, given that you can generate roughly the same amount of power in five minutes of max intensity exercise as in the next twenty-five of steady aerobic exercise. Also, this is able to use the input of multiple people more easily than a bike generator. I can imagine a system where a group of campers could pile their gear into a barrel, raise it quickly via a "tug of war" type mechanism, and then have access to on-demand, stable power for days. Similar advantages to compressed air, but easier to engineer.
- lol, in doing that unless "renewable energy" - or otherwise "free" or non polluting, is used it negates the whole idea, then it merely becomes a delayed gratification exercise. Currently the whole energy input is from the human turning the handle.
why is there always somebody ruining the fun? And yes, i agree. But: When the sun shines and we produce energy with solar panels, but it is not used by people in factories or at home..... an excess production basically. We could store it in batteries. Or we could convert it into this idea. Windpower the same. When there is enough wind and the mills produce too much, we could store that energy in some gigantic weight that is being pulled up a mountain. And when there is not enough wind or sun to produce power, we could drop the weight down the mountain. Right? They basically do this with water. A lake up on the mountain and one below. And when there is too much energy being produced and nobody uses it, they use it to pump up the water to the lake above. And when they need more power, voila, they got the water in the top lake to produce the power they need. Btw, indeed, this is not Perpetual Motion. But i do not think this man, mr Geoffkeller, was talking about that. @@kadmow
I wonder if it would make sense to have the turning action powered by a big spring and regulated by an escapement similar to a rolling ball escapement? That would be really cool.
And imagine that being loaded by returning springs, laid flat at the base of a car and powered by gravity through thrust and force to recharge a battery for endless power with a wind up handle just in case.
Herne Bay. You have a really interesting pub there. I'm from Canada but lived close to Black Robin pub a few years ago. The best way to get around and know England, by pub. This one I'm thinking about holds about 6 people.
8:30 That was the first gravity battery video I saw, at least that had such a simple mechanism to "recharge" it. Was inspired to make my own, but it was long before I even knew what a resistor or Ohm was, so it never got further than a desire to make it. Maybe I will give it another go at some point, but likely after I get the money and tools to do so. I did get my first 3d printer which was delayed due to Christmas stock being out, but I should be able to build a mini one that can be scaled up rather easily. Maybe even pair it with a capacitor or two and a lantern form factor for outside when I am grilling late at night :)
10:00, The work required to rotate the cage must, of course, be equal to or more than the work that can be got out of the falling weight. It would of course be a similarly person-powered device if buckets of water were lifted up the same height to fall through a turbine, or a spring was compressed. In all cases, it is human powered via an inefficient device. As I've said before, gravity is a rubbish accumulator for small scale devices like this. Equation for potential energy is mass (kg) x height (m) x g (9.81 m/s/s) Do the math. A ten tonne mass falling through about 37 metres 'releases' about 1 kWh. With most setups friction is huge, and times generator efficiency you will be lucky to get 20% out = 200 Watt-hours. To be of any use you need to suspend your entire house on a rope. Good luck with the plastic worm drive gearbox then! :) A good mass storage system is water pumped way uphill and run down through turbines when required, AKA pumped storage, at decent scale.
The rotating frame is ingenious but it seems like it would be simpler overall to have some kind of ratchet in the weight allowing it to be lifted without turning the screw - possibly something like the "half nuts" on a lathe feed screw, so you can pick the weight up and let it drop without turning the whole machine over
Much simpler. Motor horizontal, weight on a string wrapped around the spindle, drop the weight. You can use a gearbox to adjust rates. The motor can also be slowed to a crawl by the natural current limiting of whatever circuit. Cheers.
The mechanism at 8:16 reminds me of an anniversary clock. Very nice if you had two wired in parallel and 180 degrees out of each other you could have a continuous supply of energy, or should I say converted energy.
Mr Smith and all viewers thank you for your content and discussion :) just had a lovely discussion with the folks behind the thunderstorm generator, they claim that the generator eliminates carbon monoxide. My question for Robert is simple, does water vapor in the air intake lines lead to diminished amounts of carbon monoxide through chemistry? Or is the efficiency merely mechanical, a result of the expansion of steam? Thank you for your interest in the thunderstorm generator, and for your keen desire to confront the misleading. Your perspective would mean alot to the team, and I'd like you to have all of the relevant facts. Claims about tsg are: -mechanical efficiency increased (doubled). -transmutation of elements in the reactor. -transmutation of exhaust from carbon to nitrogen. -chemical changes in the exhaust.
Here's a thought ok how to move an enormous amount of water quite easily: Take a large vessel. Connect large vessel to water below via pipe. Fill large vessel with steam. Seal off the vessel. At which point the steam condenses into water. Creating a vacuum, drawing water into the vessel against the force of gravity. The only energy needed, is enough to create the steam to fill the tank. Ps. The same thing can be done by igniting hydrogen and oxygen into steam, then liquid water.
8:08 YES that s an amazing Machine, i remember saving it to my HDD last week or so, i will look if i can find some videos you might not have seen, also gravity generator related,
Did you know around half the power consumed in california is used for moving water around the state. There is one pumping station with seven 40,000 horsepower motors that lift the water almost 2000 feet to flow into los angeles. But there are lots of 30 to 100 foot pumping stations that i feel could be augmented by modified archemedes screws. Actually spiral tubes of several meters in diameter and the lower end of this is on a floating barge so the depth of the dip is controlled so the top of the tubes are never filled to the overflow level. This might be able to lift significant amounts of water without and bypassing with much smaller motors to spin it.
This idea has been in my head for over 15years, the simple conclusion I came up with, is that earths gravity has almost no energy in it. In fact, gravity is one of the weakest forces to exist. To store a real world amount of power in gravity you need tons and tons of weight. It's not really practical. Is it cool ? Yes.
What if the spindle was huge and really tall, and it had a spring under it that would lift the spindle, perfectly calibrated that any more than a few kilos would allow the spindle to be pressed down. Then, you install a cage at the top and have it next to a large overlook at the end of a hiking trail. People could enjoy their hike up, and then get a free ride back down the bottom. Of course, you'd be harvesting their gravitational energy on the way down.
I had an idea years ago when they first opened the fitness centers and put the stationary bikes in, why not hook them to a generatort and a cord and power the place? Or have them charge batteries to save any excess? You could actually make everything in the place create energy ,but some of it would be more trouble than it's worth.
Have you yet investigated heavy electric motors acting as clock drive weights, climbing up endless chains, with limit switches at the bottom and top of their runs? Even simpler, more efficient and more elegant than spirals. Been made for years. Church clock makers can show you examples. Perfect for storing energy.
I had a thought the other day. What about gravity driven cuckoo clocks? I remember my mother resetting the weights each day, granted they weren't hooked to an electrical generator, and true the students used a much greater weight, but would a chain drive have construction advantages over the worm gear? Or would it be the opposite? Curious about your thoughts and experiance.
I think that using a chain would make the design more accessible to DIY'ers as the worm gear shaft isn't easy to make and expensive to buy otherwise. Also there is very little room for rollers supporting the weight on the shaft, so that may require high precision small parts to minimize friction, further increasing complexity. The main challenge with a chain is to limit the descent rate without adding friction, other than the desirable resistance from a magnetic field passing through a coil. I'm sure a balance can be found with a very small sprocket for the chain driving a large stepper motor or custom-made generator. Unless it's meant to be operated by a child or elderly, I'd skip the whole crank system and manually rotate the frame as it's long enough to give plenty of leverage.
@@VeniceInventors I agree about the crank system. Maybe it was proof of concept for a massive system but, more likely I think it was to teach some engineering principles to students.
Love the gravity battery at the end. *Did anyone get the specifications?* Ie; Time it takes the weight to fall, the actual weight used, the distance it 'falls', Watts generated, thread pitch, type of coil system used to harvest the power, and so on. I also looked for this on the Net, but had no luck. _I guess I could calculate most of the above, but experience tells me its always better to get raw data, rather than theoretical calculations._ I like the idea of a gravity battery, and have been toying with the idea of making the weight a container filled with a liquid. The liquid is emptied at the bottom and then reset. Making the reset process relatively simple, lighter and safer, removing mechanical stress from the system. This would allow the 'recharging' to be done slowly as the container is re-filled, via a small pump with the same water (Liquid), by a smaller intermittent energy source. (Wind, solar and so on). Obviously a minimum of two systems would be required for a continuous power source.
I really enjoyed this video, Rob. Thanks for posting! Do you have the URL for the video of the Technological University of the Philippines portable gravity power generator? I'd like to watch that as well.
Did you post the link to their video? I don’t see it..or was it just included in this video ?also could they use a spring type contraption to rest the weight?
There's an even better system proposed or in the works now for a mining operation. An electric train goes up a mountain unloaded. At the top it get's loaded with ore, Using regenerative breaking on the way down it recharges its batteries.
Awesome idea. Just a little difficult and not very cheap if scaled up to store solar power for a small home though. Secondly there may be mechanical power losses due to the different directions of spin. But still awesome. Thanks.
When you don't have better technology, you use what you have. You can wait for better technology, but you won't have the benefit of the current technology if you won't use the current technology.
@@mooneym.3642 Most things can be improved. But they have to be used before one can see where their inefficiencies are. You won't be able to improve a defect, or inefficiency until the defect or inefficiency is made known. Defects and inefficiencies will only be made known through real world use. What looks good on paper, does not always translate to works good in the real world. That's why no one has succeeded in building a "perpetual motion or over unity machine". The designs look good on paper, but they don't work in real life.
If places like Niagara Falls and the Hoover Dam were fitted with gravity power recovery systems that utilized a much greater percentage of the water "flow", such as water wheels of such quantity and capacity to handle the volume..., then much of America's energy could be captured for "free". [Fuel price free, not building, operating, repair, etc]. The screws/propellers/impellers currently used let a lot of water to pass, andat the water output the water still has much energy....
The problem with gravity energy storage is the need for tremendous space. A lead acid battery contains enough chemical energy to lift itself 12.6 km straight up...
A LiFePO4 had enough energy to lift itself into geostationary orbit. That said: if you do have the space, or low energy requirements and prefer to skip deteriorating chemistry (like for an emergency radio) they have a few very distinct but unique benefits.
Awesome, i have virtually no engineering knowledge, but enjoy these videos (and Roberts laugh). I have been asking myself for the last 10 - 15 years wether it's possible to build houses with a gravity weight dumb waiter type of system, that could power up using maybe solar, or off peak power, and then drop and generate when needed. I guess it is possible?
More than possible, the mechanisms needed are in existence. Ive been in the same boat for a similar amount of time. Why use chemical batteries when gravity can store energy forever. It's cleaner to make, easier to source, and less detrimental to the environment when end of life comes.
you're looking at a small homes usage would be like a 5 ton weight at least 50 feet in the air and maybe produce a few hours of energy the reason this is not more popular is because the amount of weight necessary@@flyingsodwai1382
To produce enough energy to heat a home in a emergency is going to take alot more then a small device that just light up bulbs. Better off with a small rocket stove.
I wonder if you put a motor that will crank another C G and so on, in a circle so that the last C G cranks the first one again starting the processes all over again and each one gives a little bit of energy to power lights or what ever?
Pardon me, as I am not an engineer by any means, but I have some thoughts on the last invention shown. What are ways that the power could last longer? What are some ways that it could produce more power? What would making the weight heavier provide? Would a smaller threading be better because of more travel distance? Would this be possible with gears?
Energy was not _given_ the apple (merely _loaned_ ) and it must return with interest (it is a s lave) it was forced to relocate (at a cost to the apple and its pips) that must fall down a gravity hill (more like a wall they can never climb) before it is more and more quickly eaten alive by maggots or ultimately turned to a rich juice and consumed while its pips are spat out
Gravity storage is my end game. I love the fact that it's storage time is infinitely lossless. I have questions about the mechanical efficiency though. IS a worm gear running a genny physically more efficient than a chain or rope turning a pulley for a genny? I've no physics training really but it seems friction losses would be more in a worm gear set up.
It depends on the screw and nut combination. In CNC technology, one of the things that is designed to eliminate is backlash. Backlash is slack in the system that allows play within the nut and screw union. There are two ways to eliminate backlash. 1) Use the screw to create threads in a plastic nut. 2) Design the screw and nut in such close tolerances that there is no slack. In a belt or chain system, you would use an idler pulley to remove the slack in the system. The key is to know what you are engineering for. In this setup the worm gear appears to be limiting the weight's speed of decent, but that may be caused by the electrical generation itself. Whereas a belt or chain will have no ability to limit descent.
