Ox Power

Respectfully, I think that you've confused "pull" and "lift".

When pulling a mass, they are only overcoming the friction of the "carriage" and not overcoming the gravity to lift the mass.

Next, it would be more efficient to eat the Ox and put the food that it would consume into a digester and get methane that can be used "on demand", stored, transported to other places and sold etc.

Have you calculated how many kWh it takes to refine the 36 tonnes of lead for the mass, let alone that for the generator, cables and so on. Look at the total system.

Also,your proposed Ox would need to be reared for nearly 2 years before reaching the strengths that you indicate.

Yeah, you're right, thanks for pointing that out.

Reading about oxen's ability to haul "..2 to 3 times its own weight.." messed me up.

In any case, all that needs to be done to 'rectify' this is;

i)more runs with smaller load, or

ii) longer runs through lower input-torque gearbox.

It is true that there're infinite number of setups to pull this off, but, doing it through oxen gives the farmer/owner a very marketable " well exercised and organic ", premium quality marbled-fat steak/beef for the market.

Can't do that if you eat it first !!

Also, going the biogas route would introduce its own set of challenges.

e.g.:storage, engine to convert chemical energy to mechanical and then to electric energy.

"Transport to other joints, for sale..", that's not part of this deal.

Not at this stage anyway.

As for the not-so-green lead production.

Maybe those guys did it with hydro-power, all through the process.

Well, I know what you mean, but, for now, that's before us, and we'll have to do something about that elsewhere.

i.e.: that's another project, for another day!

Have you ever worked with large animals? I have and I know exactly why man put as much effort as we have into inventing any device or machine he could to get away from animal power.

For the cost and effort to implement your concept you could easily build a number of wind generators, and solar panel system plus have a massive set of batteries to run off of and still be time and money ahead.

There's a reason modern man left animal power behind a century ago, Its inefficient labor and land intensive and all around a pain to deal with.

Don't mean any disrespect by making it sound simple(and straightforward) to implement this proposal, especially when working with draft/pack animals.

However, objective here to highlight the feasibility of using gravity as an energy store.

Besides, all the numbers listed above is to illustrate scope of a typical 24 kwh setup.

For e.g.: let's assume a location where, on average 6 hours of solar power can be readily tapped.

i.e.: Which means I have 25% of 24 hours to pack up all the energy from the sun for the day.

4 kw of solar panel capacity gives me that.

All that excess energy can be stored in the above gravity system - via an electric hydraulic pump.

A lot more compact than a pumped-up storage system !

And if there's a wind turbine in that location, great, yet another backup!

Tractor in the farm?

One hour run at 80% load(for e.g) would charge up the system in 1 hour !!

Bottom line.... tap all resources at our disposal, the green ones, of course

And my objective is to put together an ultra compact(and highly flexible) energy storage system.

The above is one of a few I'm working on.

Maybe you could run some simulations....?

If only I could get Bill Gates to share a bottle of Old No. 7 with me...... !!!!

I can follow that logic to some degree but ultimately what makes or breaks a AE power system is operating cost per unit of energy made available and that cost can be of either human time human money or both.

If it takes a lot of either or both then although it's a functional system it isn't a cheap one operate.

Owning and working animals is huge labor and cost. Even when the animals are not working they still cost a considerable amount of personal time and effort to keep.

Putting up a wind generator and solar panels plus backup generator and battery bank once they are in place are several magnitudes of order less work in the same long-term time frames.

A wind generator will run a so long as there is enough wind.

Solar panels so long as there is enough light.

A generator so long as it has fuel and oil.

Large task animals, well they won't do much of anything useful let alone of high levels of exertion unless you are sitting on their backs the whole time and what energy you do get from them took a whole lot more human time and effort than just sitting there making them go.

Most of your energy savings goes into shoveling up after the ox, unless you dry it and use it as fuel.

I wonder how that compares with lummox power, which seems to be abundant.

Abundant perhaps, but not trainable.

Nah, let 'em stay in politics.

Well, at least Trump might get good profit for beef again !

Interesting note that as the number of animals working together goes up the usable power ratio goes down.

14 horses ganged together only make just over 8 continuous working HP.

So given that rate of diminishing returns now I see why the businesses I have worked for that had 100+ employees accomplished about as much gainful productivity in a day as 4 - 5 people working alone would.

Or, maybe you worked for businesses who hire losers?

Never really favored the idea of ganged animal power anyway..... a bunch of them jostling around never looked productive at all!

That concept works better elsewhere, with a different breed of 'draft animal'.

Maybe that's why the Boraxo 20-mule team always looks motionless. Cue up the "Grand Canyon Suite"!