Storing energy with mass lifting 1

[MikeVV]

Has anyone ever seen a system that stores thermal energy by raising a mass? I believe that such a system would allow for solar heating of homes by using the mass of the entire house as the medium to lift. A home can weigh as much as 40 ton (US) and, if lifted just a few inches, could store a significant amount of energy that would be extracted when lowered. Sure, this is a strange idea, but it seems to me that someone would have looked at this idea in the past...

 

[stevenw]

The cost to build a home that would lift several inches would be more than the pay back. It would require flexible connections on the plumbing, electrical, telephone, water, gas, cable tv, movable ramps at the doors, safety screen to keep animals out from under the house when raised...<br><br>A better mass raising system would be to pump water up to a tower storage tank and let it power a turbine.<br><br>In Europe there is a lake that feed water to a power house when peak electrical loads happen and off peak they pump the water back up to the lake.<br><br>Hope this helps.<br>

 

[MikeVV]

Thanks for your reply,<br><br>I would expect that such methods for storing energy would have an &quot;up-front&quot; cost.&nbsp;&nbsp;The use of a water tank is limited in its efficiency and mass.&nbsp;&nbsp;The use of the entire building weight is better on both of these facets.&nbsp;&nbsp;If done on the scale of a comunity rather than an individual home, a hydro plant or water reservoir makes sense.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>Turbines have an inherent inefficiency - so does the process of pumping water up.&nbsp;&nbsp;A mechanical system has higher efficiency.&nbsp;&nbsp;It is difficult to create however because of its uniqueness and high precision needs.&nbsp;&nbsp;A hydraulic system (using rams) might be a good comprimise.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br><br>The weight of a building is the key.&nbsp;&nbsp;This weight is higher than anything else that can be used on a limited land area.&nbsp;&nbsp;The elevated tank idea would work but only if the liquid density allowed for a large mass to be elevated - something like mercury would be nice if it wasn't so toxic and expensive.<br><br>The idea takes advantage of mass that all ready exists.&nbsp;&nbsp;

 

[LTD]

Mike,

Houses are wimpy and flexible, so lifting one would require a very different foundation that would get to be prohibitive.

Dirt and steel are quite cheap however. A little red paint and people would think you had a neat little barn in the back yard... No complicated attachments. You could sink it into the hole you got the dirt from...

Strikes me that you'd be looking at recovery systems similar in some ways to &quot;tidal energy&quot; recovery systems. Massive slow movements. So &quot;low intensity&quot; that I'm guessing that you'd want to seperate the lift from the recovery system to maximize efficency in each.

Larry [sig][/sig]