7 Simple Alternative Energy Batteries 

@@Underground-Electronic-Music some

@@Underground-Electronic-Music very cool

Think I am going to try it. Currently, I use a generator and heat exchanger to heat my water and pump the gas into algae ponds… if I ran the gas through a media bed first which also contained a liquid circulation system i could add a preheating system to my hot water system. Thanks for your info.

@@TheWaterH3rO I hope it works for you!!!

I am building or digging my own system on 5 acres in Northern Nevada. When the ground thaws.

That’s awesome!

Cannot wait to hear how it goes for you.

How’s the bees wax working for ya?!. And what made you pick this?

@@josephspruill1212 Likely because the heat capacity of beeswax is insane.

@@karltest1314 I like the idea of sand, but how can you take 100C solar heated water and heat the sand to higher than 100C for long term seasonal storage? Something my brain has been trying to work on.

That made my day!

Very cool

I have thoughts like that. I envision a tower with weighted 55 gallon barrel. Lifted with your car/truck/tractor. Drops with some gearing that would spin a shaft to run a car generator and make electricity or charge your battery banks.

Thank you soo much for the kind words

Very interesting idea!!! Thank you for the comment!!!!

Too cool,;)

omg that's awesome!!!!! Thank you for sharing

I used a gyrobus to go to school as a child. The carefully balanced flywheel was powered directly by a generator, which was powered from the trolley at the stop. The kinetic energy of the flywheel through the same generator produced an electric current that was enough to pass 2-3 stops without stopping (as a child I did not count km). It is a thing that is relatively loss-making, but trolleys did not have to be built along the entire route and in difficult terrain. He won the purpose at a time when electricity was cheap. Some hospitals still use kinetic storage tanks to cover small power outages or to compensate for fluctuations in the network. Domestic production of such equipment is not useful.

@@DL-kc8fc and yet people still do it

@@SimpleTek No. Gyrobuses were canceled. Somewhere it runs like a rarity, similar to the steam locomotive in the tourist season. Instead of gyrobuses, electric buses with batteries or trolleybuses have been running for a long time. In hospitals, kinetic tanks are used to bridge small outages, for example for 30 s before diesel generators start up. Kinetic reservoirs are most often used to compensate for anomalies in the distribution network, because many medical devices depend on a stable source, such as dialysis devices, monitoring units, etc. People don't really do that. But research institutes are still researching it - a flywheel in a deep vacuum on a magnetic cushion and generating electricity through superconductors. So far, it lives only on grants and tabloids. Not everything is transparently honest. :)

you're welcome

Great idea

Had similar idea, similar size too, 2.5m cube gives 15,625 m3 capacity!

@@jacknissen6040 great minds think alike

@@jacknissen6040Though now that I think about it, it'd be wise to consult an engineer or HVAC contractor about boiler sizing. No sense in blowing yourself up to get inexpensive heat. And from my understanding, a blown boiler is wicked dangerous. :-)

That’s awesome

Very interesting, I haven’t seen that yet! Curious how they do it

I've seen a video about something similar, but more like soft gel mats like what you put into a cool box. Amazing stuff. It can store a huge amount of cold or heat (with a preset, according to use) in a very small volume. They had thin mats which you could put under the floor, around your wood burner - whatever, and use it as a heat battery that would radiate back later in the way a masonry stove does, but with less bulk and weight. I can't remember the capacity compared to stone/concrete, but it was substantially higher. I saw it done in a tiny house.

Nice!

flywheels are also used by power plants in a battery capacity! IIRC some substations or generation stations keep a giant flywheel spinning and tap into it if there is extra strain on the grid. or something like that

Flywheel energy storage has been around a long time. Also gravity batteries are old technology that can be very useful and helpful if you have a place that it can be used.

Some time ago, there have even been buses that relied on flywheels (recharged at bus stops). Supposedly they could go ~6 km on a full charge.

@@Tennouseijin yes, heard of them too. I think the way they were "charged" was a large spring coil being wound up. I guess, a wind-up toy is an energy battery (anyone old enough to remember those?)

Thank you sooo much for the kind words

That sounds awesome! Thank you for sharing

Nice

Thank you for the kind words

If I thought you were s***** I would've wrote that too...

Glad I could help

Insulating in ground has been done

@@jacknissen6040 yeah but he hadn’t heard of it!

Geothermal actually uses the low grade heat of the ground, so insulation would be pointless. The heat is concentrates into higher heat with a heat pump. Heat batteries store higher heat from another source in an insulated container to prevent the heat being lost into the surrounding space or material until needed. Storage in the ground is out of the way, and the ground has a relatively stable temperature.

Good idea

Interesting

Thank you for the kind words

@@SimpleTek Hello from Australia 🇦🇺 by the way .

@@ozzypunk1 cheers from Manitoba!

Thank you do much for the kind words and inspiration!!!!

Thank you! Cheers!

You’re welcome

Thank you for the kind words

@@SimpleTek 👍

I appreciate the kind words

Great info, I have a video in my archives on that

Thank you for the kind words and information!!!

I don't think satellites use flywheels as energy storage. They use flywheels in the guise of "reaction wheels". These spin up and the counter-rotational force moves the satellite around an axis through it's center of mass. As they require no fuel, they are weight and energy efficient means to rotate satellites. The Hubble Telescope uses them to stay pointed at a target patch of sky and scan across the sky in very precise arcs. These are also components that fail over time and generally have redundant backups. They save energy, not store it; a rotating mass for energy storage would force the satellite to rotate in the opposite direction.

@@Tanstaaflitis interesting

Thank you, I did mention hydro dams…

You're welcome

cool

Use it in (under) a greenhouse as an insulation to minimize the heat losses and also to use the inevitable heat losses to keep the greenhouse warm. Use heat pumps to get any extra heat in the greenhouse back in the water loop. Plant the sugar beets or sugar cane in the greenhouse and turn them into alcohol using the same heat you have in you water loop for the distillation. Burn the alcohol when necessary in order to warm up the water/produce the electricity. Replace the water in the water loop with the alcohol as it is able to vaporize under lower temperatures. Which means the same circulation with less energy input and less energy loss. Actually, I think alcohol is one of the coolest energy batteries ever. Drinking it is a waste.

@@peterk.6093 ok

Thank you for the kind words!

Thank you for the kind words!

Cool

Compressed air using a Trompe does not produce heat. Look into this as it appears to hold great promise and is very underdevoloped.

@@sjhorton1184 thank you

Actually a reservoir is a battery as it does recharge in the form of rain falling at higher elevations completing the cycle.

@@lesliegurley8362 quite apart from the fact that non rechargeable batteries are still sold by the millions ;)

I don’t know… maybe?

Seems like an awesome technology

The bearings in my turbo work fine at well beyond 100,000 RPM

heat exchangers are great but very costly - you can do almost anything with enough money, the key is to do it affordably!

Very very cool but sounds complicated and expensive

Well said

Well said

Welcome

I like it

It is necessary to remember the law of conservation. If you pull out, for example, a lead block or a concrete panel up to 6 m high, which can handle, for example, a 20W electric motor with slow gear, which is powered by a solar panel for 6 hours (1 hour = 1 meter), you can calculate with simple mathematics that you accumulated 20Wx6h = 120Wh . We do not have to deal with the weight of the lead block or concrete panel, because you accumulate 20W per hour, ie a total of 120Wh. If you turned on the kettle in the evening, which normally has a power input of 2kW, the panel or lead would have to fall at almost a free fall speed in order to generate the necessary power to brew coffee. As you probably intuitively suspect, it would only work for a short time (during the rapid descent of the panel or lead block to the ground). The kettle would only receive its power for a moment, so the water in the kettle would still be cold. This simple math is lacking in idealized cases on video, giving vain hope to amateurs. Molten salt or huge underground infrastructure is really not for amateurs with limited investment and the appropriate building permit. Even a person with his own land will not go to a dubious business with little efficiency. If I can advise, it is better to have a suitably dimensioned solar field on the roof of the house, a suitable regulator and batteries if we want to directly accumulate electricity. You will definitely make this coffee in the evening. :)

@@DL-kc8fc nothing ventured nothing gained

@@SimpleTek Don't take it personally. It is necessary to distinguish between the "idea" and the presentation of something that experimental institutes or companies can afford, which will drown taxes in an eco-project with many contracted experts. For an amateur, this is not realistic in terms of both investment and efficiency and associated returns. We who work with photovoltaics can afford the investment, because these installations actually work and, depending on the situation, show a surplus that must be processed so as not to reduce the immediate and commonly used power in the home and not overheat the panels from untapped power. This is a real accumulation of energy, which is obtained essentially for free and everyone can achieve it, even on a small scale. There are other ways, but they require their infrastructure, control and service. If it was as simple as it is talked about, it would be used, which it is not.

@@DL-kc8fc As it is with EVERY storage option, so my suggestion is no different than everything else out there.

Very cool

You’re welcome

Wax is amazing

Is it flammable and can get quite expensive assuming you get the proper mixture of wax required per application.

Ohhhh, intriguing concept!

That made me think of an ingenious set up of a solar vacuum tube running in floor lines with water, with another, closed loop line that would remain only in the floor itself with parafin wax running through it. During the day the solar tubes would heat the parafin wax into a liquid, which would be surrounded in sand in the floor of a greenhouse. So that both the sand and the wax would be heated throughout the day. I believe this would be an EXTREMELY efficient system. With the proper depth this could actually mimic a tropical region much better than many existing passive greenhouse designs. Especially in colder regions like northern Canada.

You should look into Glauber salt.

@@whosonfirst1309 I used to have packets of those hand warmers when I was a kid, I loved watching it crystalize. I had put that as an option for a potentally high end unit, the ability to bring it close to the temp needed, then just finish the process with a microwave.

@@joeblundell299 please look up chrisleblay. Very interesting.

thank y!!!ou

Glad it was helpful!

Sergei is awesome. I pray for his safety in Ukraine.

Ceres makes great stuff

petroleum jelly is a phase change material. a European company called CRODA sell phase change gel packs

Wow

Agreed

sweet

Also called a flywheel. Think that is the better search term if anyone is interested in researching on the web. Usually done in a vacuum to eliminate atmospheric friction also called drag.

@@sjhorton1184 yes sir, sorry I should have updated my comment. It’s some pretty cool energy storage and doesn’t have the west like lithium or lead acid. But suffers more from short term loss. So a daily cycle is a better application there then trying to store it up for weeks or months.

No but it sounds interesting!!!!!

True, it is costly compared to just water

Thank you

Actually, I am using 4 of 18-wheeler propane tanks (250PSI @ 50,000 gal) for the pontoons in a livaboard barge. I can use wind solar and waves to compress air... pretty inefficiently, but for free and continuously top off these air batteries. Thst air will 😂do all kinds of things from electricity to propulsion. It's cheap and easy to get the equipment... you just don't want to pay the power company for the air. 40hp Referidgerator trailer diesel engines with massive 3 cyl "air compressors" attached from the factory (for the refrigerator loop). All running on cleaned waste oil... almost free and pushing a generator, distilling fresh water, HVAC heat and water at the same time during the air top off phase of operation. You know ... on cold still Feb days in the rust belt. Almost 10k# of compressed air.. . Zero emissions.

Cool

Well said

What is a word in one country In one country often isn’t in another. Time to expand your horizons!

​@@SimpleTek Did you mean to say 'exponentially'?

cheers

It sounds like a really fun experiment. It will never pencil out in dollars and cents, but that's not the only reason for doing these things. We can learn a lot in the process and have an opportunity to spark discussions with friends and neighbors.

I have ore videos in my archives

Google it for information.

very cool historical fact!

Im sorry. Try some of my other videos in the archives!

Great point!

Not that I know of, it's a estimate thing for me

interesting!

Interesting

interesting idea!

Been like that for decades here in Manitoba, we’re very lucky with ample hydro available

I think I have a video on it in video archives on this channel

Interesting thank you

go online and visit pellet furnace builder Okofen. they have a Stirling mounted on the furnace to generate 5kw of electricity.

no, interesting!!!!

ok

No, please provide a link, very interested

heat moves slowly through the ground, thus it can store heat

Interesting idea

@@SimpleTek design equation (for energy density, for flywheel energy storage): S=pi^2 * r^2 * f^2 (^2 = power of two, r = radius of the disc, tall or flat, pi = 3.14159, f=spin revolution frequency per second, S=J/kg)

@@SimpleTek examples: f=3.3kHz (for 200krpm), r=1m, giving 110MJ/kg, 1MJ=0.278kWh, or, about 30kWh/kg. example 2: f=333Hz (for 20krpm), r=10m (wider disc), giving the same energy density, 110MJ/kg (same as hydrogen energy density), or about 30kWh/kg.

​@@SimpleTek you can always add 100x more mass if spinning down 1/10 the frequency, or add the same amoung in radius than you removed from the spin frequency, so either 30kWh/100kg (=300Wh/kg) or r=100m (flat really wide radius disc, a large solar capture area mass spin disc), f=33Hz (for 2000rpm, like in a conventional engine rpm), giving . example: r=100m (area of pi*r^2=31400m^2, or 31MW of solar power area, if 1kW/m^2), giving the same 110MJ/kg

btw, the centifugal force design equation for the disc is: a_rad = 4*(pi^2)*(f^2)*r, so the larger disc, relatively, the less the centrifugal force tearing it apart, almost the same as the energy density equation, (f^2)*r instead of (f^2)*(r^2), so increasing the radius gives less worry about the flywheel breaking apart, but still, it should handle a large centrifugal force, of an order of millions, like in the 200krpm jet turbine at approx r=1m, f=3.3kHz, a_rad = 44.7M-g, for the jet turbine

that's just water though - different materials have different melting and freezing point with different amounts of energy required

Interesting

Interesting idea!!!!

Thank you for the kind words

Search for "Flywheel energy storage (FES)"; also there are grid-scale commercial applications already. A recently published (13 April 2021) review of this system is open access: Olabi, Abdul G., Tabbi Wilberforce, Mohammad A. Abdelkareem, and Mohamad Ramadan. 2021. "Critical Review of Flywheel Energy Storage System" Energies 14, no. 8: 2159. As for phase change, RU-vid itself suggested me this video: "Heat Batteries - Revolutionising Thermal Storage & Enabling the Decarbonisation of Heat | ASHRAE UK" (sorry, no links: they delete my comment).

@@s.b.8704 thank you

That’s awesome! Thank you for sharing!!!

No. Rover on Mars uses an isotope battery that is not really a battery. A few things in the video are also not batteries, but let's be tolerant. :)

@@DL-kc8fc by Webster’s definition of a battery none of them are, I address that though

@@SimpleTek That is why I call for tolerance. No need to deal with it.

Cool

No but it’s a good idea

I bought all the materials but haven't done it yet - soon

it should

Yes, but sand has a lot of air spaces that make it a poor thermal mass unless huge quantities are involved. A big, open top pot of water will collect and store much more. You might want to look at rocket mass heaters also.

@@orcoastgreenman up to 100’C, then the water boils off. The sand can heat to hundreds of degrees

You completely misunderstood me

Completely? Then I guess I'm beyond hope. LOL!

@@rafaelshumaker1883 yep! Lol

I think you might have misunderstood me. I was not criticizing, not in the least. I was merely pointing out that some of the things you mentioned could be combined, to even greater advantage.

will do! Thank you. do you have a link?

@@SimpleTek it's not allowed to post links in RU-vid. You need to search for it

Cool!

I don’t know, there’s a lot more variables than that.

Sweet

Lol nice! Cheers

Thank you

Very cool Idea

It works but you need something to contain it

They work

There are options on my channel

Good points

Good advise