Advanced Rail Energy Storage

Regarding the webinar I did on Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES), Matthew Graham writes: This is the best idea for grid level storage I have seen. Why such little publicity? This is so simple and beautiful you would think it would have a much more vocal following.

It’s true that this has received very little attention.  I’m reminded of what Winston Churchill said:  Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about. 

Seriously, this is a technology that, I believe anyway, has much to be modest about.

A fine friend and four-time client, the late John Tyson, hired me to evaluate this, and I reported:

Where ARES doesn’t require water (like its cousin, pumped hydro), it does require elevation whose range of acceptable contours is fairly narrow.

More importantly, this uses two concepts: gravity (Newton, 1660) and electromagnetism (Faraday, 1830); there is very little about it that could possibly be improved on over time.  By contrast, battery technology, with its constantly evolving chemistries, the advent of nanotechnology, advanced materials science, etc. will quickly close the window on ARES—and, sadly, just about the time that utility-scale energy storage actually becomes an important ingredient in the modern-day grid.

Obviously, not everyone agrees; I happen to know that its proponents are completely sincere in their belief that ARES will be a winner in the future of energy storage.