DIY Gravity Battery: Unexpected Results!

I Made a Real Gravity Battery: Here is What Happened!
Introducing the Gravity Battery: Revolutionizing Energy Storage Technology! 🌍⚡️ Discover how this groundbreaking innovation harnesses the power of gravity to store renewable energy efficiently and sustainably.

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• DISCLAIMER
- All extraordinary acts in this video were done by video editing.
- We don't own the 3D printed models in this video, They belong to their respectful owners.
- Some works may be done in the background to make the video more interesting

• TAGS
#engineericly #3dprint #solar

[infered]

Gravity batteries exist already, however instead of a weight that can catastrophically fall down, it's just water. They simply pump a reservoir dam backwards during the day and let it fall out at night to balance solar power. If you try this again, you should try it with a water pump and a large container on the roof.

[mrab]

Some ideas: 1. Instead of an IR sensor, use a microswitch that will be pushed by something attached to the rope. That way, it won't be sensitive to the colour of the rope. 2. Add a centrifugal brake on the rope to slow the weight's descent if the motor breaks. 3. Measure the temperature of the motor and have it turn off if it gets too hot. 4. Add a ratchet on the motor shaft to hold the weight when it has been raised.

[danon-theautisticmaker]

This is cool, but it would have been nice if you'd included more technical data like, final versions - weight of the bag of rocks, distance from top to bottom of rock bag travel, gear ratio, run duration (time it took for the bag to travel from top to bottom, voltage & wattage generated during one rock bag decent, etc.

[mliittsc]

I'm pretty sure that the friction of your gears is pretty large. 3D printing is a great thing, but it limits you to materials that make it better for prototyping than final product (as you discovered with the pulleys) If you were using off the shelf parts would you make the gears from plastic with no bearings? A snatch block (block and tackle) would be a natural thing to use since in this case the weight of the block works in you favor. You can get much of your gear reduction from the block.

[davidrumsey]

Cool illustration of the principle, and great that you got it working in the end.
It would have been interesting to know a bit of data: final mass of rocks, height they were raised, Voltage, current and time as the rocks were raised, Voltage current and time as the rocks were lowered. Obviously nobody would expect great efficiency from a prototype setup like this, but it would add an extra layer of usefulness if the data had been included.
Great job anyway.

[GeneralPatton]

Hey man I just wanted to say I think your videos are great! You are doing an excellent job at expanding your mind and testing your creativity! I value the way you have the ability to deliver information to your audience in such a comical, yet educational manner. I also enjoy your subscribers constructive feedback allowing them to introduce new ways to view how one might improve on these experiments you present!

Keep up the great work please!

Whatever you do, don’t stop challenging your imaginative and constructive thinking as well your passion for creating and informing!

[danw]

Interesting proof of concept experiment! For a real-life situation, you would want a deep hole in the ground to contain your counterweight and steel cable to raise and lower it, along with a second cable to allow you to retrieve it if the first one breaks. The motor-generator should be a large permanent magnet DC motor and a steel geared 4:1 primary gearbox for your winch, and a multiple block and tackle with large diameter sheaves for the cable to naturally multiply lifting torque. The winch drum on the motor should incorporate a solenoid-controlled ratchet to keep the weight from dropping when the sun isn't shining. I built one several years ago that will produce 1.5 KW for 4 hours from a 600 lb. weight in a 50 ft. hole. It takes a full day of good sun to 'charge' it up, and I can't run my inverter or charge other batteries while it's in use, so it doesn't get used very often.😜 *P.S:* I used a 4 wire DC stepper motor from some printing equipment that already had the 4:1 gearbox, and a controller that ran on 24VDC. The output part was a bit trickier to design, and I had to make an auto switching device that was triggered by (lack of) input voltage to the controller, so it would switch to the output circuit when the sun wasn't shining. I just set the ratchet solenoid on a separate circuit so I could start it from inside the house. These motors are very efficient since they have multiple windings and essentially output multi-phase AC current, which is easily converted back to 12 or 24vdc for low-voltage lighting, etc. I thought about making a multi-phase > single phase 120 VAC converter, but the speed isn't stable enough to maintain 60HZ with varying loads.🤷‍♂

[Speedy_Ali]

12:52 that "alhamdulillah" was clean

[jebeda]

Glad nobody got squished by falling stuff.

[mikefochtman]

Interesting experiments. One thought, you can reduce the tension in the rope and the torque/gearbox requirements by arranging some pulleys to form a 'block and tackle'. Put two pulleys at the top and two hooked to the bag and run rope through them, finally fixing end of rope to top support. You can get a 4:1 reduction in the rope tension without significant loss in energy storage (or, alternatively lift 4x the weight with your existing). Of course you will need longer rope and take up spool will need to be larger.

Just a thought, part of your troubles was the high torque/ tension your winch needed, and this would be a way to reduce that.

[ktaylor]

I'm sure people have suggested this, but you might want to get a really long rope (doesn't have to be so strong) and use a block and tackle to take the load off your motor and gearbox. You'll be able to lift a heaver load with the same motor and gearbox (but maybe a larger reel).

[dfu]

This video was so much more fun than 90% of the ones I have seen. It was informative and honest! I loved the humor. You sir, have a gift with your intellect and skill. Intellect and skill will always improve, but never change your personality. Top marks for originality!

[AtomicElf]

You can decrease the design difficulty and possibly improve efficiency by reducing the amount of mass that you are lifting at one time. Using something of uniform size like marbles or ball bearings might be a good alternative, although there would be wasted space and extra expense. A more versatile system would be one that uses fluid. Someone else suggested a capacitor bank, which might also act as a good in-between buffer if you are producing more energy at any given time than you are storing, or to distribute the load if the energy production method results in power output fluctuations.

[coolcat]

I love this. The problem with chemical batteries is their self discharge rate. My solar system overproduces by a huge margin from May through October. Currently the power company takes that extra power from me and sells it to my neighbors, giving me credit for only about 1/4 of the price that they're charging my neighbors. Then during the winter months when we don't produce enough power they charge me full price for the supplemental power that we need. If I could store the power in a lossless kinetic battery similar to this it would be a game changer. Of course, I'd be trying to store several MWh so just a few rocks won't cut it but I think the concept is sound.

[julesc]

Awesome video.
If you put another pully on the weight and fasten the end of the roap on beam next to the beem above you can make a reef making the pully mechanical advantage more so you can have double weight for longer roap and the motor will see the same load.

[lucianon.]

If you utilize a compound pulley system, you can reduce the needed weight while increasing the length of the rope. This would require a lower gear ratio meaning less instances to generate noise.

[avoirdupois]

This was a fun video to watch. Showed some nice basic concepts and 3d printing and prototyping. Gravity batteries have appeal due to their inexpensive ingredients, however, as noted, the energy density is pretty low. A perfect battery (no friction losses or wire resistance loss) would store energy =mgh (mass-g-ht), so a 100kg mass lifted 10m would store 9810j, which is less than the amount of energy in a AA battery. Where I grew up, I lived on a creek where the tide was about 1.5m. I envisioned large floating weights that would be lifted by the tide, then fall under a gear reduction, driving a generator. I concluded, sadly, that I would need 500, 000 kg lifted a little over a meter to make 5kwh per high tide, about what my house used at night. Not feasible for the middle school version of me :( That said, there is a company that makes small LED lights that use this principle. They run for about 2h using a 10kg bag of dirt lifted about 2m, and make a few milliwatts of power, enough to run lights for reading, food prep. The idea was to replace kerosene lamps or open flames for reading. They have changed their product to a new one called "nowlight, " a human powered generator + rechargable battery where a few minutes of pulling a cord charges a battery for several hours worth of light, or many minutes of phone charging. Another great option is to use small solar powered yard lights, charge them outside, and bring in at night.

[timelson]

Add a snatch block for mechanical advantage and charge the battery. This produces more electricity with less work. Easier on the engines. Also you could you a car or truck to lift the object and charge a full days worth in minutes. You could use a small harbor freight motor. Multiple fuel sorces. You could manually lift it and work out. You could use a home gym to make a small one. There are way to many possibilities. And one more thing that will blow your mind from lifting those rocks. Water.

[SnicHax]

How much power did you manage to get out of this setup in the end? that is the thing I'm most interested in :)

[philippklostermann]

I remember a figure in my school physics book showing a 1, 5 V cell with a face and arms and legs lifting a car 2 meters to demonstrate the energy storage of such a cell. You need heavy weights and great heights to store sufficient amounts of energy. But I like the concept. In larger scales it could (and maybe will) be a great alternative energy storage.