In which JB describes the advantage of water mills over wind mills and discusses the technical challenge of renewable energy more generally. Filmed in the OpenLucht Museum in the Netherlands near Arnhem.
Use the windmill to pump water into the upper mill pond. This is a thing they actually do in some places, as you can turn on your hydro generators quickly to get more power when demand spikes.
I built a gravity battery that stored wind energy. I made a wind turbine that lifted a heavy weight slowly over time. To use the energy I disengaged the turbine's gear and engaged a gear that lead to a little generator, the weight would drop and drive the generator. It produced very little energy but was a fun weekend project.
You might be very interested to look up energy vault gravity storage if you aren't already aware of them. A few months ago I read an article about a large scale experiment where they used cranes and large blocks to build towers using extra energy then dropped the blocks to gather the stored gravity energy.
It's fantastic to see the start to your travels over Europe. I've always found the idea of what are essentially nature powered mills fascinating... it's stroke of genius, when one considers the idea, that we've been using this technology for centuries. The ubiquitous double-a battery in its original form. Edit: I'm sorry to say i forgot to comment on the quality of this video. As always, my good Josephs, tres superbe.
@@GoodandBasic Great vid, as always! I have the great good fortune to live in a region where the geography does allow for it. Here's a shot (from a nearby mountaintop) of two reservoirs of a pumped-hydro project. (They also are in the system that provides New York City, well over a hundred miles to the south, with its drinking water.) Sorry about the image quality - it was a very humid day! www.flickr.com/photos/ke9tv/14481612866 You can see the topography at kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test4.html?la=42.4440&lo=-74.4467&z=14 The project can generate 1.1 GW at peak load, and the uppermost reservoir can store over 60 TJ of energy. That's some battery! Trivia about the project - they found the oldest petrified wood on the planet while excavating for it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilboa_Fossil_Forest Fittingly, the cliffs above are guarded by some of the oldest living trees in New York: www.ancientforests.us/articles/Science310.pdf
I am really interested to see the advances in compressed gas energy storage. I'm not sure if air is actually the best choice due to issues with thermal losses as is compressed and expanded, I imagine there is some sort of chemical that has lower losses between compression and expansion. I live in the floodplains of Mississippi and there isn't much variation in topography for about 20 miles in any direction, and I can drive for hours without hills if I follow the rivers, so pumped hydro isn't really an option here unless we figure out how to build giant water towers for next to nothing.
Personally I've contemplated using my own property, which has a pretty serious elevation drop between one end to the other, to set up my own 'water batteries'. Using a pair of water tanks with a hydroelectric generator between them and a series of mechanical wind mills to push the water up the hill. My homestead is in the shadow of a mountain we just don't get good sun half the year so solar just isn't a good option.
They could collect methane from all that sitting water by simply using a dome shaped over water surface with a valve. There are vids about it from Arizona swamps and even that student from Holland collecting it in a condom and running his moped methane. Maybe adding swans or other wildlife would give more yield. Look at it ,the pond needs swans.. another thing why I hate wind turbines.. they're noisy and requires more material than hydro, in comparison, water is 100 times more dense than air so constructions for hydro can be way less for the energy yield.
