Gravity Power

The Conservation of Energy principle states that energy is neither created nor destroyed; it merely changes form. Without a perpetual motion machine the energy involved in placing the 10 tonne deadweight at the top of the 50 metre tower is always going to exceed MGH once it's there. With a perpetual motion machine there is no energy to be taken out of the system.

So, what's the point, please?

I think the point is! That someone is posting an idea; getting others to think!. The original statement of humans hoisting a weight i think is a noval idea, think of all those weak & overweight office workers lifting weight to power their computers & TV's is an excellent idea; "should reduce fat & create energy conservation by lazyness".

Well done original entry

The point is that posts like this proposal/question are asinine!

If all you can contribute to a discussion thread are insults and sarcasm (see your reply #6), then perhaps you should decline to participate in the discussion. There is nothing asinine (def. foolish or devoid of intelligence) about the original post - its apparent simplicity has prompted a number of interesting ideas based on the general concept of tapping currently unused energy (e.g. stationary bikes at gyms, or overweight office workers) and converting it to useable energy. Maybe none of this is feasible or practical, but sometimes great inventions come out of ideas originally thought to be crazy. Have you ever heard of brainstorming?

Near large mountain range like Himalaya, there would be differential gravitational field. More gravitational pull on the side of mountain range and lesser on other side. At such place one could construct a giant wheel. This wheel will be driven by differential gravitational force and would be in perpetual motion. It could be used to generate electricity

Guest wrote: "Near large mountain range like Himalaya, there would be differential gravitational field. More gravitational pull on the side of mountain range and lesser on other side."

I fail to see how there will be "More gravitational pull on the side of mountain range and lesser on other side", unless the two sides are at different altitudes. Difference in altitude cannot produce perpetual motion - you can use the potential difference until it's gone and then you have to lift whatever you dropped again, at a loss, one must add...

The original poster had a good idea for storing "horse/bull/human/diesel power", but unfortunately he will lose some of that power, i.e., it would be more efficient to drive the generator directly by whatever power source.

Jorrie

Not condoning the giant wheel idea ... but I think the mountain post was suggesting that the heaviest part of the wheel (placed horizontally) would be attracted to the giant mountain range, on account of the mountain's mass - ie that's where the gravitational differential comes from - the different sides of the wheel at different distances from the mountain. Of course even if it works you have to get the heavy part of the wheel back to the side away from the mountain (pulled by oxen presumably).

Great idea!

I suggest we also put some seats on the wheel and sell rides to the sherpas and yeti. This would defray some of the costs of building it.

I read about a fellow who had an old garage with a hydraulic lift. He used the energy of lifting a large weight to store energy from his windmill driven hydraulic pump. Lots of other ideas using hydraulics as well....he re-used old automatic transmissions to create both heat and mechanical movement...the perfect recyler! Good lateral thinking IMHO. Not every energy converison device needs to be electrical in nature.

1. I am not expect the knowledge of the Third Principle of Thermodynamics. Also the Second Principle, let's forget about it.

But the First Principle is just turned 180 years, more or less.

2. Instead of use the gravity in a complicated manner, why non connect alternators to bicycles powered by a multitudo (of sleeves ?) ?

3. Why CR4 does not execute a filter-action, e.g. an "Asinity - BandStop" ?

I like the idea of getting cheap electricity from a multitude of slaves riding stationary bikes that are connected to alternators.

The idea may have merit as a means of storing intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar. I read of a fellow who hooked his windmill hydraulically to such a deadweight. It was a piston pushed up in a tall column, which was reversed at night in order to spin an alternator. There would be sizable friction losses, of course.

Pumped storage is a viable power demand-levelling technique and is practised at Trawsfynydd and Llanberis in Wales. The pumped storage scheme offered, and may still offer, an interesting visitor inspection experience. Some large equipment is used to pump water from a low level to a high level when there is a surplus of power, the water being released to generate power when there is a deficit. The equipment is housed within a mountain.

Conservation of Energy still applies.

Actually, my intention is to propose a simple and practicable energy storage system, taking away the mechanical losses, this seems to be the most efficient arrangement- may not be the most compact, though. The proposal to use a diesel set is to allow the motor to run at optimum condition for x number of hours than on an on-off basis. Yes, this is another version of the pumped-up energy storage concept, except that, I feel, it's far more executable. In general, I think this arrangment would go very well with animal husbandry, i.e.: a bull may produce 0.5 kw for 10 hours, but once the energy is stored, you can tap 10 kw if you want! solar, wind, river stream and other similar energy sources could be coupled for the same end effect.

What a great idea for off the grid living. Kind of like a grandfather clock in a very large scale. As your power demands increase you increase the decent of the weights. You collect and store the surplus energy in a "few" batteries.

This is easier said then done. Great care must be put into the construction as this thing could be a little more than dangerous.

As for the lifting pulley system, I like the idea of a wind turbine hooked up to a variable pulley belt drive. Maybe even build a replica of an 1800s Dutch windmill and conceal all the workings inside. This will let your neighbors know that you might be a bit eccentric but have not lost it completely.

The structure would need a Planning application in the UK...

PWSlack - you must work the the building codes department in the UK... lol

We had some people visiting us recently from Uganda and they were amazed that we would pay good money to go to a club where we would climb up on a bicycle to work up a sweat. What a waste of energy (and food) they said. Imagine such an energy storage system at every fat farm or exercise club.

Why is every one wasting their time on this post, haven't you heard? Steorn inc at www.Steorn.com has solved the perpetual motion issue. =P Do you see that, it is my tongue placed firmly in my cheek.

Thanks for the referral Jeff. Here's one for you on the same line...www.rexresearch.com There's so much perpetual motion stuff in the USPTO that they stopped accepting perpetual motion / over unity devices years ago. The major obstacle to their development and marketing is the fact that they don't contribute to our religion of consumerist economics. I've seen many working models and have built a few as well. But the notion that nothing is over 100% efficient is not true, it's simply not produced and marketed.

It true that xforce in can only equal x force out so the key is to make x force in from energy that is already being used. If this were geared like the winding of a cookoo clock it could work. Even a block and tackle design would work to raise the weitht. If the weight is 50 meters you might need 500m of lead cable that you could just hook to your car when you leave for work in the morning. You could pull the weight up and unhook the cable. Then while you are at work all day it would slowly come down turning a gear box that turnes coil to generate electricity. Every time you drive somewhere you pull the weight back to the top.

You don't have build a tower. I large hill could do the same thing.

Ok using a world proven example: some rack railways were powered using a water weight up and down the slope so a vertical lift would not be required. It would be very easy to do and would be in motion all the time driving water up and dropping water down the mountain/hill etc. by gravity constantly creating energy with the water and rack railway car for a counterweight.

guys, forget about perpetual motion, there is no mathematical evidence that this is practicable, if at all possible! MGH based energy system is a very compact arrangement, and since it's based on mechanical drive-it is the most efficient in energy conversion system i.e.: energy storage and retrievel. The use of tower is merely to introduce the concept, more practicle, and perhaps more appealing, is to have subterranean pits- say a square hole of 50m deep, put 2 beams across, suspend a dead weight, connect this to a gearbox/alternator and there you have it.

In this arrangement power retrievel may not be so straightforward though, 'coz, for a given weight and gearbox arrangment, torque at gearbox output end would be set by Hz and load requirements of the final load, unless of course if the gearbox is a CVT.

On a large enough scale, this is commercially viable, you know - especially when you have a large farm with lots of idling horses/bulls or a large group who are seriously in need of physical workout(sic).

Sadly, many here seem to take this as a perpetual motion machine, whereas in fact you clearly proposed it as an energy storage system. Power companies do this now, by pumping water (back uphill) into reservoirs during off-peak times, thereby storing the energy for peak times. Doing it with water is comparatively inefficient, however, given the frictional losses in both laminar an turbulent flow. Simply lifting a weight would be far more efficient, and a CVT could retrieve the energy for many purposes.

I suppose it could be argued, however (re human/animal power) that only the energy gained from overweight animals and humans would be produced efficiently. For people/animals of normal weight, their energy conversion is pretty poor: better to take the diesel fuel that went into tilling the soil and delivering the crops, and use it in a good generator -- or run an engine to lift the weight directly.

But i like the efficiency of the idea: in a system using batteries, in several months, a large portion of the stored energy can be lost. In your system, the stored energy would still be there many years later.

How about rigging up some sort of hot air balloon system with block and tackle. as the sun heats up the balloons they rise with the weight attached, then release the weight to retrieve the energy built up? how about even doing this over say, thermal vents, or even over those stacks at the oil refineries which release and burn excess vapors? there is a constant source of wasted energy

That too is another way to realise this concept, it isn't strictly gravity powered though. Work done by such systems would be due to density difference. I was actually thinking of pumping Helium into a balloon and let bouyancy force do the rest, linked by mechanism similar to my initial proposal. However, I'm a little skeptical about the praticality of such arrangement, i.e.: holding the balloon steady, cost of He versus nett work produced, etc.

You could also use similar arrangement in a pool/lake/sea/tall column/pipe filled with water. First place an empty/sealed ball or cube at the bottom of structure suggested above, link this up thru' appropriate drives to a genset,say.Now fill water up to the top of this structure (assume 50m tall), work is extracted when the ball/cube moves up the column. Amount of potential energy is determined by the size of ball/cube and height of column (work done=Force x distance). Now this arrangement is very practicable! Once the ball floats to the top, simply drain the water off and repeat process. Assuming, of course you have a ready(read free) supply of water to fill column, i.e.: a stream flowing/lake at a higher level. Incidentally, this would make for an interesting science projects for school kids-they'd learn bouyancy force, mech. drive, electricity generation, etc. in one go!

Another neat form of energy from gravity is a "trompe". I've seen the one at Ragged Chutes in Cobalt, Canada. It was built in 1910 and has been delivering an unending supply of cool and dry compressed air ever since. Check it out at this link. www.cobalt.ca/ragged_chutes.htm

Great Link! Really interesting. Thanks.

Great site indeed thermo, thanx.

The operating principle is much like an air ejector, where air is sucked along during its descent down the tube. It's the way the concept is applied here which makes it interesting!

The weight is a great idea for storing solar, wind, water, steam, and other intermittent sources of energy. I actually found the link because I was thinking of the same thing. It would only work on a small scale at the residential level, but who knows? I worked with GE on large windmills, but it only works when the wind blows!

Good to know that guest. actually, deadweight/MGH energy storage system working on a large scale isn't the issue, it's getting it to work on an individual household scale that gets a little challeging.

Maybe more sensible to bore a hole rather than build a tower?

That way if your deadweight mechanism fails, it doesn't make anyone else dead. Plus, you get your generator mechanism at ground level, and you may not even need planning approval!

If the hole went into something porous then you could try this neat trick... fill 50kg bucket-shaped deadweight with 500kg of water at ground level (stored in big tank, filled by rainwater from your roof). Let the bucket fall down the hole under gravity extracting the energy. At the bottom of the hole, release the water into the earth, then lift the 50kg bucket. Refill it with water - you get 10 units of energy out for every unit in!

Even simpler if you happen to live on the edge of a cliff.

OK, how's this...

You suggest 10 tonnes up a 50 metre tower - so the same energy as required to lift 100 tonnes up 5 metres, or 500 tonnes up 1 metre. How to lift 500 tonnes up one metre? Easy - float it on the tide (and why stop at 500t?) Screw solar power - this is pure gravitational moonpower!

Sit the structure on four sliding columns at the corners with generating mechanisms inside. As it lifts on the tide (floating - think big steel box full of air - not dissimilar to an object commonly called a 'boat' (Google it if you're unsure)) the energy from the bouyant force can be extracted on the way up. Then, when the tide begins to go down, the huge weight is at its highest point and you can begin to extract the gravitational potential energy on the way down.

Not sure how you would efficiently extract the energy? Hydraulics probably?

Then again, might it be easier just to use the tidal water as it enters and leaves a dam?

By the way, if we powered the world's cities this way, would we be gradually extracting energy from the moon's orbit until it fell on our heads? (Next project - begin constructing some giant moonproof domes over centres of population...)

Here's a nutty idea I had the other day. Why not have a ramp you drive your car on with a generator mounted on each corner? The front of your property would need to be higher that the back. At the same time that your vehicles weight was going down this weight would also be used to raise a lightweight adjacent ramp. So you drive onto it when you come home then in the morning drive off around the back of your house and off to work or where ever. When you return home you drive onto the rasied ramp and the process starts over. Of course the greater the height difference between the front and rear of your setup, the longer it would generate power. The power could be used to charge a bank of batteries or compress air or breakdown water into burnable gas. Then you could generate power on demand as needed. You would want the car to sink very slowly to generate power longer, so you would want gearboxes of a high ratio that would spin a shaft at a very high RPM while moving the car downward very slowly. Could this be something that would be possible? Don