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[SciShow] How To Make Buildings Into Batteries (www.youtube.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works to c/energy

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TL;DW: Incorporating pumped hydro storage into skyscrapers is a possibility. Not necessarily practical, but possible.

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[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Who doesn't need a bunch of extra tonnes of water up there lol. What an absolute not good idea.

[–] Dkarma@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The point is built in infrastructure so it doesn't weigh on the existing infrastructure. Plus newer systems like these can often be super cheap and efficient to add to existing build plans.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It's just slightly better than solar roadways.

Have you heard of maintenance costs? In skyscrapers? What a wonderful event when it degrades and leaks for millions of dollars of repairs lol.

Also it would make the building more expensive and take up space, like they are not expensive enough? Why on earth would you put that stuff in a building for starters? Dig a dam or something cheap and sturdy lol. It just sounds like a tech-bro crack head marketing fever dream.

Edit: the truth makes you salty lol

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You are completely right. Look at my math above.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks! Good job too!

Lots of people want to build perpetual motors with magnets and gets defensive when told it won't work out I guess :-)

[–] Five 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The petro-billionaire people who brought you "The Line" are joining up with the badly conceived Octopus Crane Tower idea people to bring you something that definitely will never be built and probably has deep conceptual flaws.

The important take away from this performance art is that the people causing global warming and who stand to benefit from pumping even more carbon into the air to are working on clever solutions to reverse it, and you can continue living your life as if things will eventually return to the pre-climate crisis status quo.

[–] evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I'm pretty disappointed in scishow for this one. Usually, they are pretty good.

There are, in fact, deep conceptual flaws. There are a lot of grifters trying to sell ideas to fight climate change that can be easily defeated by high school level math. They try and spin the obvious shortcomings as "engineering challenges" where you could figure out a way to make it more efficient if only you invested in them enough. The math just doesn't even check out at 100% efficiency.

Potential energy is m x g x h. Let's do the math for the Burj Khalifa. The top floor is at 585 meters. According to their published fact sheet, there are 57 elevators, and the service elevator has a capacity of 5500 kg. Let's pretend that every elevator has this capacity, and they all go to the top. It would store 5500 x 57 x 9.8 x 585=1.797 GJ. This is about 500 kWh, or about the energy used by 17 average American homes for a day.

According to wikipedia, the cheapest Tesla has a 57 kWh battery, so if there are 10 electric cars in the parking garage, they can store more energy than all the elevators.

Hyperloops have the exact same issue, the math never checks out, so any company promoting them is fraudulent.