A great deal of thought and tinkering effort has gone into making this. I just hope people watching appreciate all the time and effort Rob has put into it, I know I do thanks mate.
I'm just starting to get into all of this wonderful engineering business (purely for my own mental enrichment as a human) and honestly, these videos are incredibly helpful. Thank you so much @@ThinkingandTinkering
Love these videos. If I had a garage and money and a 3D printer I'd be tinkering just like you Robert! I'd like to design and build a range of different wind generators with storage systems for off grid applications. I think wind is really the purest form of electrical generation. I like the ideas you present in these videos most of all and the fact that you share everything freely reflects a kind and generous and trustworthy soul that genuinely wants to see a better future for all.
That dog clutch is an ancient device, used at sea and on land. A teacher told me that a dogged clutch hoist was one of Shakespeare's triple puns when he wrote the line "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war." If your line was a heavy chain, rather than a rope with a weight at the end, the mass actually lifted at any time would only be the length of the chain to the ground, but the release would be the same over the entire length of the chain, no matter how long it is.
I did woodwork at school and built a coffee table I still have. At Scouts I did pioneering and learned about pulleys and levers. I built my own Windows XP computer. How come no one teaches kids how stuff works at school? At work there was an atmosphere of "We don't want staff writing computer software to solve problems we want it done by experts." Already busy people had to perform the boring repetitive work that computers are so good at for lack of off the shelf software written by experts. I like your attitude, you see an issue and create a solution.
That's cool Rob. When I was a kid, my grand parents had an old Grand Father's clock that used weights as it's energy source. I remember seeing Grandpa wind those weights up a time or two. If you look up the plans of an old Grandfather's clock, you will see how they slowed the decent of the weights so that they could be used as the energy source of a clock.
Never ceases to amaze me this bloke. I've got an old disused bore hole in my garden. It's basically a 200mm wide steel pipe 35 meters deep this would work a treat stuck on top. Cheers Rob you've just provided a brilliant solution for how to utilise this old pipe.
The problem with gravity batteries is the amount of mass you need. Another video showed that a 20 gallon (or something like that) drum of water held up about 4 meters generated less energy than a single AA battery.
The conversion of potential energy to kinetic and electrical energy is far less efficient with pumped hydro than with a static weight directly driving a generator. With pumped hydro a significant portion of the kinetic energy simply bypasses the generator as the water continues to flow through. With a static weight directly driving the generator, nearly 100% of the kinetic energy (minus that which is lost to friction [thermal] and vibration [acoustic]) is input to the generator. That difference noted, you are correct that a massive weight / height would be required to power an average household, but just as it’s best to have multiple streams of income, it’s also best to exploit multiple available energy sources rather than trying to generate all required power from one source. For me it’s oil, biogas, geothermal, air to water heat pump, solar PV, solar thermal, and wind, all contributing to the whole of our energy needs and providing the excess to the Finnish grid at the same wholesale rate the big power plants receive.
some old printers used to have electrical clutches built into them, put one of these on the shaft and you can release the weight at the touch of a button.
Hi Guys. I've seen a rig made from scrap car parts that could be applied here with good effect. It was made for well digging - same sort of thing as here, an engine lifts a weight and drops it onto a pin repeatedly, driving it into the ground. It was a car rear axle, complete with diff, disk brake on one side and a wheel (no tire) on the other. The weight hangs on a rope wound round the wheel. The motor drove the drive shaft constantly. At idle, the disk brake rotor whizzes round and the wheel is stationary with no power to it. When the disk brake is applied, the disk rotor stops and the power is sent to the wheel, raising the weight. When the brake is released, the disk rotor spins free again and the wheel is also free to spin, and drops the weight. It always struck me as a beautiful use of a scrap mechanism with almost no modification required.
Gravity batteries in the form of pumping water uphill are used by the national grid for surges (usually people putting the kettle on during breaks of popular tv programmes)
A lot of metal worm gears can be purchased online which can cost less and last longer than plastic ones as well. They even have gear boxes you can purchase off the internet called 'windlass gears' that are pretty much just a worm gear assembly, so no need to try to make one if you do not feel so mechanically gifted, but they will likely need lighter oil unless you are using a really good sized turbine, because they are designed for long life under heavy loads, and as such, expect to want to either have a good sized turbine, or a lower viscosity oil just so you do not lose a lot of potential power in the operation. Also, I would suggest that if you are using this both for stored and instantaneous power generation, that you would use 2 clutches, so that when you are not lifting a weight, you are also not driving the gear assembly, as this is just needless loss of power. In other words, one clutch to release your weight [seeing as the worm gear will not unwind] and one clutch to release your gear [seeing as the worm gear produces drag on the turbine] and the two clutches would, under normal conditions both be engaged and disengaged at the same time, so only one actuator mechanism would be required to push both clutches in, and, depending on how you made the assembly, they could be actuated from a 90 degree lever that had more of a "T" shape that gave a 3rd point of action, OR just have a driving mechanism [maybe even a weighted 'trip' mechanism, making it more 'renewable' and slightly less complicated] attached to one point of contact of one of the shifters and allow that to make the lever just a bit simpler. I could hand sketch some drawings for people if they wanted, just let me know. My sketches are sort of crude, but they are legible enough.
Worm gears are great for high torque, but they are also high friction if not using the right materials or proper and constant lubrication. They will eventually wear down both surfaces in contact, but are normally easy to replace (unless you have a bad design, which is not the case here due to efficient simplicity.) Now I'm thinking next level (much more engineering required): multiple clutches, raising one weight after the other in sequence and same when letting go of the weights.
Yes, a worm and wheel has poor mechanical efficiency due to the sliding contact (compared to rolling contact on spur gears). The higher the reduction ratio the lower the mechanical efficiency.
given a fulcrum and a long enough lever you can move the earth. but this is a neat idea. you could automatically switch the clutch when the weight hits the top. put a spring and servo on the ratchet. one could even set up a double side drive clutch to lift 2 weights in an alternating sequence . switching from one side to the other as the weight is dropped it can be lifting the opposing weight.
Cool! If you built a house on a single shaft you could use its weight as a battery with the added advantage of swiveling around to always face the sun.
Instead of letting a weight move up a tower, you can also pull a cylinder to make compressed air! All mechanic and no electronics, that whould be awesome!
Magnets , on a disk , faced to an aluminum plate connected seperatly to a Winch . When the turbine spins up over an rpm it creates a magnetic field in the aluminum drawing the wieght . Run the whole thing on a one way bearing , so when the turbine slows the wight will fall spinning the output until it falls to the ground .
There's a UK company experimenting with this very principle: the generator floats offshore and has 2 weights; as 1 is lowered another is raised by a wind powered propeller. These generators raise and lower their weights at different times to generate a steady current
to make it automatic, put a spring between the 2 dogs, and instead of sliding one, the moving one is on a screw shaft that when driven (by the wind), moves it to engage the other one. when the wind stops, the spring pushes it back (the turbine would turn back a little). the thread count or slope of the shaft would have to be very small and it would have to be on the other side of the worm gear.
Great opportunity to end a roughly 1½ year's break, and getting back for new inspiration by the brilliant Rob. Cant wait to also sneak on to T'N'T, probably still presented partly by Luke. 😊 Thanks, Rob! 👍 Greetings from Franconia (Germany) Gwydion / Marc
Or pressurize an air tank? Nozzle it back toward pelton scoops when rpm drops - hope your wind picks back up to store away a bit more psi? Im trying to picture a dished out water flywheel ~1m diameter so torque input is lower at low rpm. And then incorporate a wind conveyance with both a trigger coil in the serpentine (bedini sg) ran off a solar panel and a water jet inline down from my rainwater tank so it would take a 0 wind, 0 sun, & 0 watering the property day to not have any inputs. I also get some real steam from my solar water heater coil during midday that i can use somehow when i upgrade to fittings that wont melt (i didnt expect 100C temps!).
@@ronmartin7253 Have you seen his air compressor energy storage one? Can't remember if it was attached to the dynabike or a wind turbine - perhaps bike. Trouble is the cost of them and getting a used one free is hard to come by (He actually fixed the one he was given free by cleaning it!)
With a differential you can raise the weight from wind on one shaft and another source on the other shaft and if both energy sources are available at the same time then the weight will be lifted as much as twice as quickly due to the way the differential works.
Rather than use a ‘dog clutch’ , you could use a slip clutch . One face of the clutch has a sloped side , when the clutch starts to be engaged not so much of a hard start to the engagement . In fact , there may not even be a need for the selector if there’s two corresponding cogs , all you would need is a light spring to keep them engaged .
Low Country sailcloth windmills hauling bags of grain aloft to be opened so the grain could be dropped through the hopper ‘twixt the wind-driven millstones to be ground into flour. Not much under the sun that changes, except maybe the materials.
I had an idea the other day thinking about this of using the ocean and having a system that pulled a floating object underwater and when you need the excess energy you let it float back up to the top driving a generator. Could connect one to all these giant ocean wind turbines.
A while back I saw a proposed design for an offshore wind turbine that would use a gravity battery in order to smooth out the power sent through the cable.
@3:50 this is the way that motorcycle transmissions work. The fork that shifts gears is driven by a cylinder that has groves in it that the fork rides in.
Combining wind, solar, and the gravity battery's in smaller arrays is what the future will be. I am glad to see others thinking about this too now. We need to escape the grasp of big energy to be really free.
PS...have you seen the Gravity Lamp? I was thinking about the same thing but use solar powered hydraulics to lift the weight and gravity to generate when it falls. I was thinking if you had excess on that arrangement it could actually be a gravity generator instead of just a gravity battery.
I used to work on the Peacekeeper ICBMs. Now that they're retired, I believe turning their old silos into gravity batteries would be an excellent use of them.
The old toy cars come to mind. Pulling them back a few clicks to wind the battery, let it go & it zooms across the room. I wonder what the gear ratio was?
The application should work for lights and other low energy consumer devices. A 40Kg weight that is 30m in the air or a 300Kg weight that is 5 meter in the air will give you the potential energy of a AA battery.
a AA battery has 10,000 joules - more or less - and you use it and it goes to landfill - don't forget 1kg raised 1m is 9.8 joules so 1 ton which is a cubic meter of water - about the size of a washing machine raised to to the roof would be around 58,800 joules - as 3,600 joules is a watt hour then that would be 16 watt hours - more or less - my light bulbs are 40 watt equivalent light and take 4 watts - they are LED lamps - so it would be enough to light my living room easily - that small wind turbine is a model mate!! and if you used steel, concrete or lead it would be the size of a large shoe box, a two drawer filing cabinet or a small plant pot in that order lol
May be worth looking at an auto engage/ release, so once the weight reaches the top a switch is activated to disengage clutch. This way, the turbine can continue to spin. Two generators. One on weight in anticlockwise and turbine clockwise. This will allow generation from the turbine while wind is up. When the turbine stops, activate the weight (with some sort of resistance) to drop, generating power in both directions. With and without wind. Reason for resistance is to control power generation on way down .
Excellent work rob. I've been thinking about a mechanism for a while to do this but to raise weights sequentially and then have them drop all at the same time. This way it's easier on the turbine at low RPMs but can discharge a larger amount. Like a trickle charge with a large discharge but mechanically.
Non sequitur: Have seen the articles of the solar dish with solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC)? It harvest heat, but also break down water vapor using the SOEC to generate 500g hydrogen, which is 2kWh, per day! I was looking for 1kWh solutions and I found about it. I can't find anything about DIY SOEC but I feel like the idea can be an inspiration.
Fabulous Step 1 to demonstrate the idea! For Simple load lifting, great, but some variation of a Fly ball Governor is probably a wise addition, if the Descending Weight is to also driveva AC Generator, to control the Speed, and the Output Frequency. Also, is there some way to Make this have a "Controlled Soft Start/Stop", as the Weight Rises, and Decends? Maybe a Friction Brake, combined with the Mechanical Governor?
1 watt hour ( capacity of a AAA battery) will lift a tonne about 30 cms. Or lift 300 kgs about 1 meter. It tends to be more cost effective to charge tiny batteries, than it is to lift considerable weights considerable distances.
The gravity battery causing a verticle up and down momentum reminds me of the mechanism inside the spinning tops to turn verticle force into rotational spin. If the verticle up and down could be continuous without need for brake fork etc, it could drive a spinning top like mechanism to create a generator.
I am currently using a permanent magnet alternator with 6 30 pound weights falling one by one. soon will be 12 when I get around to it. all within a 2 x 8 floor space in a room in the house.
What would be cool is a multiple clutch system so you could sequentially lift an array of weights one at a time. More storage without requiring massive torque. Also, you could have a final clutch to allow direct driving of a generator. Probably better would be a multi fan system. One fan solely for power generation, one to load weights. All feed into the same generator, so at times when the winds are low, a weight can be engaged to assist to maintain a certain power level. This can continue if needed through each of the weights until the wind speed picks up and the fans can take over. Then the secondary fan can go back to elevating the weights back to top position. It could transition back and forth seamlessly, if the clutches could be engaged easily enough. The only thing is such a system would probably introduce a lot of inefficiency that would require bigger fans just to compensate for. Nevermind the added complexity of maintenance.
That was amazing you deserve more funding! Add an Arduino and it could self alternate. I know your a research scientist but I feel the work you do is critical.
I'd like to see one worm gear to wind it up (like you have) plus another worm gear to wind it down, so that a big heavy weight can spin the generator very fast as the weight drops slowly
Love this idea. My current version of a gravity generator is a 20:10 tooth compound gear system with 7 100mm gears, and wind a 3 lb weight by hand. I use Onshape for making the gears.
I'm aware this is probably the most environmentally dangerous idea since leaded petrol, but how about pumped hydro energy storage, but with liquid mercury instead of water? If your wind turbine is built on the end of a tower, you could install a storage tank at the top and the bottom, and the wind turbine only pumps mercury up to the top. When the energy is needed on the grid, it can flow through a fluid turbine to power a generator. Since it's 13.5 times more dense than water, you need a much smaller volume of liquid.
maybe make several clutches, one on each side (4). So that when one unwinds another one could be wound up. otherwise when it unwinds, the turbine cannot do any work.
Pneumatic storage would be as effective. Have the wind mill drive a compressor. Store the compressed air and then run that out through a pneumatic motor on demand. That's called a basic canned air system. This was one of the original green grid designs from the 1970's but the direst to electricity people shouted it down, literally at a 1980's conference, because superconductor storage rings were the future.
What not make the raising of a weight into the ability to draw up water? That way, you can compress air, you can have a weight of water to push down at high pressure (again to compress air or drove a turbine), and you have a weighted plunger at the top of a tube which can be dropped (again driving a turbine and with the ability to compress air). Have a wond turbine driving the shop and pack all 3 options together and...bosh. Times that out by multiple devices in an array, oh my.
or use the dog clutch and make a circuit to check wind speed ... if its below a minimum disengage the clutch ... if it's above engage ... BUT it can also engage the gravity battery when the wind goes below that threshold allowing for it to keep working ... so a basic wind speed test and a pair of servos and poof you have a working longer duration system ... depending on WHAT your gravity battery is like ... such as in the demo ... great for getting a flywheel running to run the generator for a while... etc heck you could even pass any excess power into a load coil and capacitor system to run a resonating generator off of the R C resonance oscillations ...
Love this series, yet I find myself asking again and again: do any of these methods scale to usable solutions for a homeowner? Do they produce enough usable energy to make the effort worthwhile?
NO, Just use a chemical battery. lifpo4 is now the best for home energy storage. Or you may want to wait a couple of years to get the much cheaper sodium ion battery.
LiFeP batteries are a more efficient way to store energy. If I was going to use gravity, I would setup a water pumping system with a raised reservoir and a Tesla turbine at ground level.
@@rayg436 Unless it's draining heat, you generally don't have to if you store it underground where temperature is usually constant. Although having an underground water system is a different can of worms.
I was talking about it in one of my videos not long time ago. And, as well, I did calculations of how much energy + electricity we can store this way. I've used ChatGPT and the only thing which we should check is the time of the energy release. I was thinking about 3m high and 1 ton of water in an IBC. The calculations were promising to be true. Even if the efficiency would be 80-90% which is achievable I'd say, it's still worth doing. The only thing you need is a space and a bit of money cause you won't get everything for FREE for it ;). But, imagine if one block of houses would be able to install such system on their roof and use solar panels to pump it up each day ;). This can be mounted above the water storage ;). We're talking hundreds of tons of water, and that is a huge amount of energy.
1kg raised 1m is 9.8 joules so 1 ton which is a cubic meter of water - about the size of a washing machine raised to to the roof would be around 58,800 joules - as 3,600 joules is a watt hour then that would be 16 watt hours - more or less - my light bulbs are 40 watt equivalent light and take 4 watts - they are LED lamps - so it would be enough to light my living room easily - that small wind turbine is a model mate!! and if you used steel, concrete or lead it would be the size of a large shoe box, a two drawer filing cabinet or a small plant pot in that order lol
You answered my suggestion from a few days ago perfectly. Thanks, Robert. Might it also be possible to use a 'spinning top' mechanism to load energy into a flywheel and have it as a sort of 'failsafe' or backup to the gravity battery?
I would also have thought the worm gears can only go one way ; simply locking up if attempting the reverse application of force. However for example just have a play with the guitar head tuners; they are under a continual reverse force and they hold steady . Or do they ? . . Put lubrication on one of them, say low viscosity synthetic engine oil and observe it unwinding . From memory the unwinding happened quickest with molybond ( molybdenum disulfide ) .
don't forget 1kg raised 1m is 9.8 joules so 1 ton which is a cubic meter of water - about the size of a washing machine raised to to the roof would be around 58,800 joules - as 3,600 joules is a watt hour then that would be 16 watt hours - more or less - my light bulbs are 40 watt equivalent light and take 4 watts - they are LED lamps - so it would be enough to light my living room easily - that small wind turbine is a model mate!! and if you used steel, concrete or lead it would be the size of a large shoe box, a two drawer filing cabinet or a small plant pot in that order lol
Thanks Robert for your amazing content , are there vawt commercial available for battery charging on a boat? Just a safer quieter system in a smaller space . Cheers John
A great deal of thought and tinkering effort has gone into making this. I just hope people watching appreciate all the time and effort Rob has put into it, I know I do thanks mate.
thank you mate - you are right of course it takes a huge effort and it is so cool you recognize that - thanks again
I'm just starting to get into all of this wonderful engineering business (purely for my own mental enrichment as a human) and honestly, these videos are incredibly helpful. Thank you so much @@ThinkingandTinkering
Its a piece of art :-)
Love these videos. If I had a garage and money and a 3D printer I'd be tinkering just like you Robert! I'd like to design and build a range of different wind generators with storage systems for off grid applications. I think wind is really the purest form of electrical generation. I like the ideas you present in these videos most of all and the fact that you share everything freely reflects a kind and generous and trustworthy soul that genuinely wants to see a better future for all.
That dog clutch is an ancient device, used at sea and on land. A teacher told me that a dogged clutch hoist was one of Shakespeare's triple puns when he wrote the line "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war."
If your line was a heavy chain, rather than a rope with a weight at the end, the mass actually lifted at any time would only be the length of the chain to the ground, but the release would be the same over the entire length of the chain, no matter how long it is.
I did woodwork at school and built a coffee table I still have. At Scouts I did pioneering and learned about pulleys and levers. I built my own Windows XP computer. How come no one teaches kids how stuff works at school? At work there was an atmosphere of "We don't want staff writing computer software to solve problems we want it done by experts." Already busy people had to perform the boring repetitive work that computers are so good at for lack of off the shelf software written by experts.
I like your attitude, you see an issue and create a solution.
That's cool Rob.
When I was a kid, my grand parents had an old Grand Father's clock that used weights as it's energy source.
I remember seeing Grandpa wind those weights up a time or two.
If you look up the plans of an old Grandfather's clock, you will see how they slowed the decent of the weights so that they could be used as the energy source of a clock.
Never ceases to amaze me this bloke. I've got an old disused bore hole in my garden. It's basically a 200mm wide steel pipe 35 meters deep this would work a treat stuck on top. Cheers Rob you've just provided a brilliant solution for how to utilise this old pipe.
oh wow - that is an awesome asset mate
The problem with gravity batteries is the amount of mass you need. Another video showed that a 20 gallon (or something like that) drum of water held up about 4 meters generated less energy than a single AA battery.
The conversion of potential energy to kinetic and electrical energy is far less efficient with pumped hydro than with a static weight directly driving a generator. With pumped hydro a significant portion of the kinetic energy simply bypasses the generator as the water continues to flow through. With a static weight directly driving the generator, nearly 100% of the kinetic energy (minus that which is lost to friction [thermal] and vibration [acoustic]) is input to the generator.
That difference noted, you are correct that a massive weight / height would be required to power an average household, but just as it’s best to have multiple streams of income, it’s also best to exploit multiple available energy sources rather than trying to generate all required power from one source. For me it’s oil, biogas, geothermal, air to water heat pump, solar PV, solar thermal, and wind, all contributing to the whole of our energy needs and providing the excess to the Finnish grid at the same wholesale rate the big power plants receive.
some old printers used to have electrical clutches built into them, put one of these on the shaft and you can release the weight at the touch of a button.
Hi Guys. I've seen a rig made from scrap car parts that could be applied here with good effect. It was made for well digging - same sort of thing as here, an engine lifts a weight and drops it onto a pin repeatedly, driving it into the ground.
It was a car rear axle, complete with diff, disk brake on one side and a wheel (no tire) on the other. The weight hangs on a rope wound round the wheel. The motor drove the drive shaft constantly. At idle, the disk brake rotor whizzes round and the wheel is stationary with no power to it. When the disk brake is applied, the disk rotor stops and the power is sent to the wheel, raising the weight. When the brake is released, the disk rotor spins free again and the wheel is also free to spin, and drops the weight.
It always struck me as a beautiful use of a scrap mechanism with almost no modification required.
Wow, you make engineering so easy to understand! I'm hooked. 😃
Gravity batteries in the form of pumping water uphill are used by the national grid for surges (usually people putting the kettle on during breaks of popular tv programmes)
yep they are
@@ThinkingandTinkering A ram pump uses gravity to pump water uphill. It works extremely well.
A lot of metal worm gears can be purchased online which can cost less and last longer than plastic ones as well.
They even have gear boxes you can purchase off the internet called 'windlass gears' that are pretty much just a worm gear assembly, so no need to try to make one if you do not feel so mechanically gifted, but they will likely need lighter oil unless you are using a really good sized turbine, because they are designed for long life under heavy loads, and as such, expect to want to either have a good sized turbine, or a lower viscosity oil just so you do not lose a lot of potential power in the operation.
Also, I would suggest that if you are using this both for stored and instantaneous power generation, that you would use 2 clutches, so that when you are not lifting a weight, you are also not driving the gear assembly, as this is just needless loss of power.
In other words, one clutch to release your weight [seeing as the worm gear will not unwind] and one clutch to release your gear [seeing as the worm gear produces drag on the turbine] and the two clutches would, under normal conditions both be engaged and disengaged at the same time, so only one actuator mechanism would be required to push both clutches in, and, depending on how you made the assembly, they could be actuated from a 90 degree lever that had more of a "T" shape that gave a 3rd point of action, OR just have a driving mechanism [maybe even a weighted 'trip' mechanism, making it more 'renewable' and slightly less complicated] attached to one point of contact of one of the shifters and allow that to make the lever just a bit simpler.
I could hand sketch some drawings for people if they wanted, just let me know.
My sketches are sort of crude, but they are legible enough.
Worm gears are great for high torque, but they are also high friction if not using the right materials or proper and constant lubrication. They will eventually wear down both surfaces in contact, but are normally easy to replace (unless you have a bad design, which is not the case here due to efficient simplicity.)
Now I'm thinking next level (much more engineering required): multiple clutches, raising one weight after the other in sequence and same when letting go of the weights.
Yes, a worm and wheel has poor mechanical efficiency due to the sliding contact (compared to rolling contact on spur gears). The higher the reduction ratio the lower the mechanical efficiency.
An auto engagement where the weight moves the leaver as it reaches the top would be a great inclusion
Exactly what I was thinking.
This is almost exactly what I described to you in my last email to you. Wonderful work!
given a fulcrum and a long enough lever you can move the earth. but this is a neat idea. you could automatically switch the clutch when the weight hits the top. put a spring and servo on the ratchet. one could even set up a double side drive clutch to lift 2 weights in an alternating sequence . switching from one side to the other as the weight is dropped it can be lifting the opposing weight.
Wow you really put a lot of effort into that design. Very entertaining!
New mug, new mic, new set ..... My socks have detached from my feet in an explosive manner ! 😆👍
lol - it's all change mate - never a good thing lol
with some clever electronics and a raspberri pi, you can make the clutch engage when it detects a marker. Very cool work. Keep it up.
Cool! If you built a house on a single shaft you could use its weight as a battery with the added advantage of swiveling around to always face the sun.
Instead of letting a weight move up a tower, you can also pull a cylinder to make compressed air! All mechanic and no electronics, that whould be awesome!
Magnets , on a disk , faced to an aluminum plate connected seperatly to a Winch . When the turbine spins up over an rpm it creates a magnetic field in the aluminum drawing the wieght . Run the whole thing on a one way bearing , so when the turbine slows the wight will fall spinning the output until it falls to the ground .
I guess you would have to change the direction of the power from the wieght somehow but other than than and turning should work pretty good
Excellent Rob keep up the good work
Now consider, wind turbine pumped hydro. Could be a worm gear that operates an oscillating syringe pump to fill a reservoir well above the turbine
There's a UK company experimenting with this very principle: the generator floats offshore and has 2 weights; as 1 is lowered another is raised by a wind powered propeller. These generators raise and lower their weights at different times to generate a steady current
to make it automatic, put a spring between the 2 dogs, and instead of sliding one, the moving one is on a screw shaft that when driven (by the wind), moves it to engage the other one. when the wind stops, the spring pushes it back (the turbine would turn back a little). the thread count or slope of the shaft would have to be very small and it would have to be on the other side of the worm gear.
Great opportunity to end a roughly 1½ year's break, and getting back for new inspiration by the brilliant Rob.
Cant wait to also sneak on to T'N'T, probably still presented partly by Luke. 😊
Thanks, Rob! 👍
Greetings from Franconia (Germany)
Gwydion / Marc
This is awesome, please do more on this!
I love the improvements you've done!
Brilliant simplicity brilliantly made.❤
Quite glad to have found you!
huge congrats on >400K subscribers. You have earned every subscriber Robert.... wtg :)
Love your channel! Instead of a gravity battery I would imagine you could compress coil springs to store the energy.
Or pressurize an air tank? Nozzle it back toward pelton scoops when rpm drops - hope your wind picks back up to store away a bit more psi? Im trying to picture a dished out water flywheel ~1m diameter so torque input is lower at low rpm. And then incorporate a wind conveyance with both a trigger coil in the serpentine (bedini sg) ran off a solar panel and a water jet inline down from my rainwater tank so it would take a 0 wind, 0 sun, & 0 watering the property day to not have any inputs. I also get some real steam from my solar water heater coil during midday that i can use somehow when i upgrade to fittings that wont melt (i didnt expect 100C temps!).
@@ronmartin7253 Have you seen his air compressor energy storage one? Can't remember if it was attached to the dynabike or a wind turbine - perhaps bike. Trouble is the cost of them and getting a used one free is hard to come by (He actually fixed the one he was given free by cleaning it!)
@@Nick_Tag no i dont recall that vid - SO many here. A trompe can be just pvc like on a water ram or the Jeremiah chan on cold steam.
Yes, or just retract a big cylinder with air to compress it 🙂
Compressed air can then be used to drive an air motor for example..
I was wondering about the same thing
Like a hydraulic lift..and lock..very cool!
Robert, I just love your enthusiasm!
Absolutely brilliant! Brilliant mind as well. Live your videos, very informative.
With a differential you can raise the weight from wind on one shaft and another source on the other shaft and if both energy sources are available at the same time then the weight will be lifted as much as twice as quickly due to the way the differential works.
Super fun. Thank you Robert !
Gobsmacked that all wind turbines don't use a flywheel/ gravity storage method. Cheap and simple to do.
Wow Rob that design was very elaborate yet beautifully simple at the same time, I am in Awe!
Really impressive mechanical skills... I can definitely see this being useful for mechanical energy storage.
cheers mate
Rather than use a ‘dog clutch’ , you could use a slip clutch . One face of the clutch has a sloped side , when the clutch starts to be engaged not so much of a hard start to the engagement . In fact , there may not even be a need for the selector if there’s two corresponding cogs , all you would need is a light spring to keep them engaged .
Low Country sailcloth windmills hauling bags of grain aloft to be opened so the grain could be dropped through the hopper ‘twixt the wind-driven millstones to be ground into flour. Not much under the sun that changes, except maybe the materials.
Here in Germany, they are cutting down our forests for wind turbines. These turbines have a total hight of 240m.
Amazing stuff Rob. You are certainly making good use of that 3D printer. Love your ideas.
I had an idea the other day thinking about this of using the ocean and having a system that pulled a floating object underwater and when you need the excess energy you let it float back up to the top driving a generator. Could connect one to all these giant ocean wind turbines.
that is a good idea mate - maybe sink it full of water then pump air in - it would then be an air based battery
A while back I saw a proposed design for an offshore wind turbine that would use a gravity battery in order to smooth out the power sent through the cable.
Ocean wave energy generator buoys are awesome!
@@ThinkingandTinkering this might be a way of getting more out then you put in. worthwhile to investigate .
fantastic, have a wonderful day!
@3:50 this is the way that motorcycle transmissions work. The fork that shifts gears is driven by a cylinder that has groves in it that the fork rides in.
yes it is
Add a 'compliant mechanism' to the contact faces of the dogs on one side of the dog clutch and you could reduce the jerk
Love it. Imagine this on the sides of multistory buildings or even utilizing e listing routes in lift/elevator shafts.
Combining wind, solar, and the gravity battery's in smaller arrays is what the future will be. I am glad to see others thinking about this too now. We need to escape the grasp of big energy to be really free.
PS...have you seen the Gravity Lamp? I was thinking about the same thing but use solar powered hydraulics to lift the weight and gravity to generate when it falls. I was thinking if you had excess on that arrangement it could actually be a gravity generator instead of just a gravity battery.
I'll have to build one of these next time I have access to a 3 or 4 mile cliff.
I used to work on the Peacekeeper ICBMs. Now that they're retired, I believe turning their old silos into gravity batteries would be an excellent use of them.
Fantastic Rob! I wish the implimentation of these gravity batteries were more common place.
Excellent as always, thank you!
cheers mate
Use the rotary motion to wind a clock spring mechanism.
Then the stored energy in the spring to spin a flux gate generator
Wow like a grandfather clock movement
The old toy cars come to mind. Pulling them back a few clicks to wind the battery, let it go & it zooms across the room. I wonder what the gear ratio was?
It makes we want to get my Meccano set out again..(wish I still had it : )
The application should work for lights and other low energy consumer devices. A 40Kg weight that is 30m in the air or a 300Kg weight that is 5 meter in the air will give you the potential energy of a AA battery.
a AA battery has 10,000 joules - more or less - and you use it and it goes to landfill - don't forget 1kg raised 1m is 9.8 joules so 1 ton which is a cubic meter of water - about the size of a washing machine raised to to the roof would be around 58,800 joules - as 3,600 joules is a watt hour then that would be 16 watt hours - more or less - my light bulbs are 40 watt equivalent light and take 4 watts - they are LED lamps - so it would be enough to light my living room easily - that small wind turbine is a model mate!! and if you used steel, concrete or lead it would be the size of a large shoe box, a two drawer filing cabinet or a small plant pot in that order lol
May be worth looking at an auto engage/ release, so once the weight reaches the top a switch is activated to disengage clutch. This way, the turbine can continue to spin.
Two generators. One on weight in anticlockwise and turbine clockwise. This will allow generation from the turbine while wind is up. When the turbine stops, activate the weight (with some sort of resistance) to drop, generating power in both directions. With and without wind.
Reason for resistance is to control power generation on way down .
nice
@Robert Murray-Smith Robert, I am sure you are inundated with suggestions, but what is the chance of trying this out? Don't ask, don't get.
Excellent work rob. I've been thinking about a mechanism for a while to do this but to raise weights sequentially and then have them drop all at the same time. This way it's easier on the turbine at low RPMs but can discharge a larger amount. Like a trickle charge with a large discharge but mechanically.
Great bit of engineering Robert! If we 2 part the line to the weight we're able to lift more weight. I just got my 3d printer today!
Non sequitur: Have seen the articles of the solar dish with solid oxide electrolyzer cell (SOEC)? It harvest heat, but also break down water vapor using the SOEC to generate 500g hydrogen, which is 2kWh, per day! I was looking for 1kWh solutions and I found about it. I can't find anything about DIY SOEC but I feel like the idea can be an inspiration.
Fabulous Step 1 to demonstrate the idea!
For Simple load lifting, great, but some variation of a Fly ball Governor is probably a wise addition, if the Descending Weight is to also driveva AC Generator, to control the Speed, and the Output Frequency.
Also, is there some way to Make this have a "Controlled Soft Start/Stop", as the Weight Rises, and Decends? Maybe a Friction Brake, combined with the Mechanical Governor?
I love it! I’ve had a gravity battery in mind for a while because I thought it would be interesting to try regulating the “charge”.
coil spring you can put energy into the center and take energy out of the outside of the spring
1 watt hour ( capacity of a AAA battery) will lift a tonne about 30 cms. Or lift 300 kgs about 1 meter. It tends to be more cost effective to charge tiny batteries, than it is to lift considerable weights considerable distances.
Excellent, I love it!
Nice design I was thinking of using chain hoist
The gravity battery causing a verticle up and down momentum reminds me of the mechanism inside the spinning tops to turn verticle force into rotational spin.
If the verticle up and down could be continuous without need for brake fork etc, it could drive a spinning top like mechanism to create a generator.
I am currently using a permanent magnet alternator with 6 30 pound weights falling one by one. soon will be 12 when I get around to it. all within a 2 x 8 floor space in a room in the house.
Now also gear the dropping of the weight so it falls slower but spins a turbine faster
What would be cool is a multiple clutch system so you could sequentially lift an array of weights one at a time. More storage without requiring massive torque. Also, you could have a final clutch to allow direct driving of a generator.
Probably better would be a multi fan system. One fan solely for power generation, one to load weights. All feed into the same generator, so at times when the winds are low, a weight can be engaged to assist to maintain a certain power level. This can continue if needed through each of the weights until the wind speed picks up and the fans can take over. Then the secondary fan can go back to elevating the weights back to top position. It could transition back and forth seamlessly, if the clutches could be engaged easily enough.
The only thing is such a system would probably introduce a lot of inefficiency that would require bigger fans just to compensate for. Nevermind the added complexity of maintenance.
The upcoming weight needs a lever to automatically disengage the clutch when reaching the upmost position. ;)
Thanks Robert ;)
Makes me wonder if the Great Pyramids are Gravity Batteries like Concrete Towers. 🤔
Pumped hydro is another type of gravity battery that could be adapted easily.
That's a masterpiece mate
That was amazing you deserve more funding! Add an Arduino and it could self alternate. I know your a research scientist but I feel the work you do is critical.
Fascinating!
I'd like to see one worm gear to wind it up (like you have) plus another worm gear to wind it down, so that a big heavy weight can spin the generator very fast as the weight drops slowly
Love this idea. My current version of a gravity generator is a 20:10 tooth compound gear system with 7 100mm gears, and wind a 3 lb weight by hand. I use Onshape for making the gears.
That sounds really cool, any place we can see your progress (or see the final product if it's finished)?
Its just the gear system at the moment. I really like the ideas from videos 1035, 1796, and 1904.
Great job man!
cheers mate
I'm aware this is probably the most environmentally dangerous idea since leaded petrol, but how about pumped hydro energy storage, but with liquid mercury instead of water? If your wind turbine is built on the end of a tower, you could install a storage tank at the top and the bottom, and the wind turbine only pumps mercury up to the top. When the energy is needed on the grid, it can flow through a fluid turbine to power a generator. Since it's 13.5 times more dense than water, you need a much smaller volume of liquid.
pumping mercury always sounds bad in my head
Mercury is not heavy enough.
The wind turbine lift the building, and than let it fall on quartz. ;-)
Storing water is more than 13 times easier than mercury.
maybe make several clutches, one on each side (4).
So that when one unwinds another one could be wound up.
otherwise when it unwinds, the turbine cannot do any work.
Pneumatic storage would be as effective. Have the wind mill drive a compressor. Store the compressed air and then run that out through a pneumatic motor on demand. That's called a basic canned air system. This was one of the original green grid designs from the 1970's but the direst to electricity people shouted it down, literally at a 1980's conference, because superconductor storage rings were the future.
What not make the raising of a weight into the ability to draw up water?
That way, you can compress air, you can have a weight of water to push down at high pressure (again to compress air or drove a turbine), and you have a weighted plunger at the top of a tube which can be dropped (again driving a turbine and with the ability to compress air).
Have a wond turbine driving the shop and pack all 3 options together and...bosh.
Times that out by multiple devices in an array, oh my.
Excellent 👍
or use the dog clutch and make a circuit to check wind speed ... if its below a minimum disengage the clutch ... if it's above engage ... BUT it can also engage the gravity battery when the wind goes below that threshold allowing for it to keep working ... so a basic wind speed test and a pair of servos and poof you have a working longer duration system ... depending on WHAT your gravity battery is like ... such as in the demo ... great for getting a flywheel running to run the generator for a while... etc heck you could even pass any excess power into a load coil and capacitor system to run a resonating generator off of the R C resonance oscillations ...
Love this series, yet I find myself asking again and again: do any of these methods scale to usable solutions for a homeowner? Do they produce enough usable energy to make the effort worthwhile?
NO, Just use a chemical battery. lifpo4 is now the best for home energy storage. Or you may want to wait a couple of years to get the much cheaper sodium ion battery.
@@feras5017 yeah lifepo is finally affordable $1.5k for 3kw storage if I'm not mistaken. A year ago or so it was like triple.
LiFeP batteries are a more efficient way to store energy. If I was going to use gravity, I would setup a water pumping system with a raised reservoir and a Tesla turbine at ground level.
@@thegreenxeno9430 this only works if you don't have to worry about the water freezing.
@@rayg436 Unless it's draining heat, you generally don't have to if you store it underground where temperature is usually constant. Although having an underground water system is a different can of worms.
I was talking about it in one of my videos not long time ago. And, as well, I did calculations of how much energy + electricity we can store this way. I've used ChatGPT and the only thing which we should check is the time of the energy release.
I was thinking about 3m high and 1 ton of water in an IBC. The calculations were promising to be true. Even if the efficiency would be 80-90% which is achievable I'd say, it's still worth doing. The only thing you need is a space and a bit of money cause you won't get everything for FREE for it ;). But, imagine if one block of houses would be able to install such system on their roof and use solar panels to pump it up each day ;). This can be mounted above the water storage ;). We're talking hundreds of tons of water, and that is a huge amount of energy.
1kg raised 1m is 9.8 joules so 1 ton which is a cubic meter of water - about the size of a washing machine raised to to the roof would be around 58,800 joules - as 3,600 joules is a watt hour then that would be 16 watt hours - more or less - my light bulbs are 40 watt equivalent light and take 4 watts - they are LED lamps - so it would be enough to light my living room easily - that small wind turbine is a model mate!! and if you used steel, concrete or lead it would be the size of a large shoe box, a two drawer filing cabinet or a small plant pot in that order lol
You answered my suggestion from a few days ago perfectly.
Thanks, Robert.
Might it also be possible to use a 'spinning top' mechanism to load energy into a flywheel and have it as a sort of 'failsafe' or backup to the gravity battery?
I would also have thought the worm gears can only go one way ; simply locking up if attempting the reverse application of force. However for example just have a play with the guitar head tuners; they are under a continual reverse force and they hold steady . Or do they ? . . Put lubrication on one of them, say low viscosity synthetic engine oil and observe it unwinding . From memory the unwinding happened quickest with molybond ( molybdenum disulfide ) .
It's been used for hundreds of years to drive clocks. Koo-koo!
Love it! Always been interested in these batteries. Would lifting really heavy things require a different gear setup?
Probably safer and easier implement on a large scale with an electrically powered hoist, but a brilliant idea on a small scale.
don't forget 1kg raised 1m is 9.8 joules so 1 ton which is a cubic meter of water - about the size of a washing machine raised to to the roof would be around 58,800 joules - as 3,600 joules is a watt hour then that would be 16 watt hours - more or less - my light bulbs are 40 watt equivalent light and take 4 watts - they are LED lamps - so it would be enough to light my living room easily - that small wind turbine is a model mate!! and if you used steel, concrete or lead it would be the size of a large shoe box, a two drawer filing cabinet or a small plant pot in that order lol
@@ThinkingandTinkering Just off to borrow next doors scaffolding. Missus might notice the washing machine is missing though!
Thanks Robert for your amazing content , are there vawt commercial available for battery charging on a boat?
Just a safer quieter system in a smaller space .
Cheers John
Really cool!
Addendum : I view the train sets as coding in three dimensions.