299 – Gravity Storage
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Guest: Eduard Heindl Host: Markus Voelter Shownoter: Fabian Zeisberger
With power generation in the grid becoming more diverse and decentralized, energy storage is becoming more and more important. Eduard Heindl‘s gravity storage is an approach to storing electrical energy as potential energy by lifting huge masses cut out of the ground. While this sounds crazy, there are lots of reasons why this makes sense. In the episode we discuss then need, the general approach, the construction process and some of the engineering challenges. We also look at the innovation process, the path from the idea to something that is ready to be built.
Introduction of Prof. Dr. Eduard Heindl
00:03:21Prof. Dr. Eduard Heindl | Heindl Energy | Potential energy | Super conducting magnetic energy storage | Maxwell's equations | Capacitor | Renewable energy | Coal power | Nuclear Power | Thermal energy storage | Storage heater ("Nachtspeicherofen) | Pumped-storage hydroelectricity | Carnot's theorem (thermodynamics) | Solar power | Wind power | Compressed air energy storage | Decentralised energy | Smart grid | High-voltage direct current (HVDC/HGÜ) | Super grids
Engineering process
01:13:58World Future Energy Summit | ITER | Zeppelin | Forklift | Geislinger Steige
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Tolles Thema! Ist schon eine Weile her, dass ich auf die Webseite zum Lageenergiespeicherkonzept des Gastes stieß, das ich sehr plausibel fand. Jetzt bin mal auf den aktuellen Stand der Dinge gespannt. Vielen Dank im Voraus also schonmal und einen schönen ersten Advent!
I love it. The descriptions remind me of the Myst novels. Specifically the Book of Ti’Ana.
one of the WOW idea I have ever heard.
but you need a small pond out side to keep all that water when the piston is down.
Noam, they talked about the reservoir that holds the water when the piston is down. The neat thing is that this reservoir can be in a underground cavern if you want to keep land use down.
Ganz ganz tolle Folge, hat viel Freude gemacht und den Horizont erweitert! Gerne mehr von solchen eher unkonventionellen Ideen. (Markus, leider beim Bewerten vertippt, ist aber auf so einem Tablet echt schnell passiert… )
Bernhard, even the underground reservoir should be huge. 250 m diameter and 100m deep is not some thing you find or dug easily. BTW, doing the project in Saudi Arabia is tricky. try to dig there for 300 m without finding oil… :)
Really cool episode and a very interesting concept!
Wieder einmal sehr interessant, danke!
Da ich diese Webseite erst hinterher besucht habe, hat es allerdings bis zum Ende gedauert, bis ich verstanden hatte, dass das ganze nicht komplett unterirdisch gebaut werden soll. Erst als die Gefahr von Stürmen diskutierte wurde, habe ich mitbekommen, dass der Kolben dem Wetter ausgesetzt sein soll…
Ich drücke ihm alle Daumen, dass das Konzept klappt.
Really nice episode. I saw a science slam on it some years ago and they were really at the beginning.
One point is not clear. He states the system costs 200€/kWh and that “batteries are definitely more expensive” (1h02’… 1h06′). However, you find 100 Ah and 12V lead batteries for 70€, i.e. 58€/kWh.
A small 10 kWh and 1000W system, including charger and inverter, costs around 700€. Why should it get three time more expensive when scaling up?
der welt grösstes seismometer – wenn das wasser nicht dämpfen würde. trotzdem die frage: wie verhält sich das gebilde bei den verschiedenen typen von erdbebenwellen?
Mein Gedanke dazu: warum wird das Wasser nicht über dem Granit-Zylider gesammelt, und der Block ist quasi nur ein Kolben der im Wasser hoch und wieder herunter gedrückt wird? Hätte den Vorteil das man kein weiteres Becken braucht, die Abständer relative kurz gehalten werden können und vor allem dass es zu keiner horizontalen Gewichtsverlagerung kommt die zu Erdbeben etc führen könnte. Klar ist die gespeicherte Energie etwas geringer (pro Zylidervolumen) aber da sonstiger Platz gespart wird könnte es sich rechnen.
@Valerio Oddone Concerning the price, lead batteries are dead after about 700 cycles. The second problem is, the lead resources are very limited, so it does not scale to many GWh.
@c Bei Erdbeben verhält sich der Kolben wie ein Schiff in einer Schleuse bei einem Erdbeben. Er schwimmt ohne gegen die Wände zu schlagen, da Wasser zwischen Zylinder und Kolben liegt. Das problem wird aber in Simmulationen im Detail untersucht.
@Per Der Kolben unter Wasser ist eine gute Idee, aber es gibt ein Problem: Das Erdreich, (genaugenommen der Fels) oberhalb des Kolbens, und das sind mindest 100 Meter, muss irgendwie entfernt werden. Das ist teuer und daher nicht optimal, wird hatten dafür aber auch das Patent angemeldet dies aber inzwischen aufgegeben.
Very interesting episode, and a reminder for the fact that for renewable energy, we are not stuck with current systems, but that there are still new and worthwhile ideas to be explored.
I found the German accents a bit hard to take – although Marcus’ seems to improve (or I’ve gotten used to it by now).
Maybe I should just shut up: if I speak German, people complain about my dialect. If I speak English, people complain about my accent (“seems to improve”). Das geht mir ehrlich gesagt auf den Sack!
When did you ever speak German? ;-)
Markus, als Norddeutscher finde ich Deine Aussprache auf Deutsch und Englisch OK. Manche Gäste waren schwieriger, aber es kann halt nicht jeder so einen tollen Akzent haben wie David Woods.
(forgive the late comment – am slowly catching up on episodes after a busy spell).
This was yet another pleasant surprise. The nominal topic was absolutely interesting, in a Arthur C. Clarke’ish way, but I came away having learned even more by the long discussion of the role of, and need for, energy storage in general.
To someone like me whose understanding of energy basically boils down to “the thing that comes out of the wall socket when I flip the switch” this part was very well structured, well presented, and with good questions to guide – nice preparation work as always, Marcus. Maybe it was basic stuff, but I really learned some good basics that I didn’t understand before.
A particular moment that needs note.
Guest (on production of solar energy in North Africa): “two problems with pumped hydro-storage: it’s a desert: flat and no water!”.
Me: “Hmmm, never really thought of that. Good thinking, that man”. (Like I said, I learned some needed basics here :-) )
As for the language thing: of course you can hear that it was two non-native speakers, but to me, in episodes like this it often comes out as a benefit. I have found Marcus in particular to be very careful with speaking clearly and understandably in English. To me as another non-native speaker it is actually ofte easier to follow Marcus than the native-speaking guest.
As for any German dialect: well, to me the hard time with the German-language episodes is the German, not the KIND of German….
I have no problem with Markus’ English! The accent is not too strong, and he works hard to speak distinctly, both in terms of annunciation and choice of words.
Great episode as usual.
Sehr interessanter podcast. Ich hätte zwei Fragen:
1. Warum funktioniert ein 200m langes “Sägeseil” nicht? Weil die Aufdruckkraft zu gering wird über die große Distanz?
2. Es wurde angesprochen dass alternative Schwerkraftspeichersysteme nicht wirtschaftlich sind. Bedeutet das, dass dieses Kolbensystem allein durch Stromhandel wirtschaftlich ist? Oder wird bei dem Businessplan auch eine Art Systemsicherheitsprämie von Regierungen bzw. andere Subventionen mit eingerechnet?
Markus: “Maybe I should just shut up.”
Please do not let yourself down. I’ve worked with a variety of people on international basis. For somebody who is not considered a native speaker, you do have a very good pronunciation and a very good word pool to choose from.
Most people I have worked with are in a totally different league – unfortunately. And I have to say that for a German person, you are a positive exception as well.
I guess that people do confuse “being able to *recognize* that somebody is not a native English speaking person” with “speaking perfectly fine native English”.
Please do continue producing high quality podcasts like this one! Very much appreciated. And I also donated some money to you – you’ve turned so many of my traveling and waiting hours to really interesting ones.
Thanks for the talk!
Never heard before and therefore it was very interesting. Seems to be a viable and quite simple (and so genius) alternative for energy storage.
During listening I became curious whether there is an expectation to deal somehow with micro-organism in the water (as it is intended to be a biologically closed environment but with energy fluctuation/transmission). Which may get a problem for the “rolling membrane” in regard to the long run? Maybe, this is of course not a problem at all…
Markus, maybe, you can forward this question to Prof. Heindl. But there’s no hurry!
Cool episode, thanks a lot for producing it and of course to the guest for sharing his insights! I’d be interested in a transcript of this, which would facilitate sharing some of the main ideas with others. Also I wonder if there is any way to play this (and any other) episode at a higher speed. I found out with scientific talks on youtube that the combination of playing at double speed and reading a transcript (even if automatically produced and containing transcription errors) is a very effective way to skim long presentations for the really exiting bits in shorter time. I figure I could upload the mp3 to youtuble and listen there, but there should be an easier way ;-)
It seems to be, that the company Heindl Energy is in insolvency.
What a shame. Since I heard this podcast, I was really thrilled about this technology. Because it look simple.
But we still don’t know if it is practical or not, because of the insolvency.
As far as I know, there is no working pilot plant yet.
Why I came to this right now? Because currently a Telsa battery storage farm in Australia is on fire.