The dump truck, at 45 tons, ascends the 13-percent grade and takes on 65 tons of ore. With more than double the weight going back down the hill, the beast’s regenerative braking system recaptures more than enough energy to refill the charge the eDumper used going up.
So the energy this truck uses is harnessed via mining and loading… Essentially this energy was stored in the ore via geological processes.
This truck uses continental drift as his fuel.
In other words, OP’s mom.
Boom
Or in physics terms, potential energy.
Since everything seems to be going downhill right now, how would I harness that power? You telling me the crystal peddling influencers were right all along? 🤣
I’ve seen a cable lift that worked basically like that. It transferred ore down the mountain, so heavy buckets going down lifted the empty buckets back up.
Didn’t Tom Scott make a video about this?
Statistically, yes.
Yep.
I’ve heard of a diesel-electric logging truck that uses this concept as well. Use the batteries going up the mountain empty, charge them again going downhill loaded.
Kinda like the mine in the UK that use a cableway without a motor to bring ore down and empty buckets up
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Is that just a gravity battery that just so happens to be a dump truck as well?
So it was designed for this mine I guess?
I’m not sure there’s a lot of mine you’re going down filled up, the images I have in mind are quite the opposite, but that’s a really cool idea!
There actually is some design to stock energy this way, with weights you lift while having excess energy
Depends on the scale of “going down”. Many mines are in the mountains and the material has to be brought down to lower elevations. The mine entry may be lower than the nearest pass but still a lot higher than the destination of the ore.
Open pit is much more common for this type of equipment and it’s basically a reverse mountain. Still might be enough regenerative braking from just the weight of the truck though.
Still might be enough regenerative braking from just the weight of the truck though.
In that case no, because it’d be bringing the weight of the truck and the ore with it.
An open pit at an elevation of 1.5km still means the bottom of the pit could be 1km higher than the place the ore is processed at
If you’re thinking of that CGI crane lifting concrete blocks, it’s unfortunately a really bad idea.
Pumped hydro stores energy by lifting weight uphill, instead. Water is basically the cheapest thing you can get per tonne, and is easy to contain and move.
To store useful amounts of energy using gravity, you need pretty large elevation differences and millions of tonnes of mass to move.
I love that I knew this conversation was going to happen as soon as I read the article.
And, yes.
Reminds me of this ropeway thing that Tom Scott covered that doesn’t require power input either, for similar reasons:
Niche application but still cool.
We achieved perpetuum mobile
Yes, but actually no.
Amateurs.
The 1963 Černý Důl – Kunčice nad Labem aerial ropeway is over 8 km (5 mi) long, over 30 m high in places and carries 135 tons of limestone every hour from a quarry to the nearest train station. Its 120kW 3-phase synchronous motor requires power for a few minutes at the start and end of each day when most of the 800kg-capacity trolleys are empty, and spends most of the shift generating mains electricity and acting as a speed governor. Unlike the EV, it is fully autonomous most of the way, only 5 people are required to operate it including loading and unloading. The quarry will continue operation as long as it pays off, then the ropeway will be scrapped (projected 2033). A dude illegally rode the way up on it somewhat recently.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are electrified railway lines doing the same. Regenerate large amounts of energy into the grid while descending loaded; consume a relatively small amount of energy to haul the empty train back uphill.
Paywall article, but this already exists in Australia for pretty much the same use case: https://www.railtech.com/rolling-stock/2022/03/04/australian-mining-company-works-on-infinity-train-using-gravity-to-regenerating-batteries/?gdpr=deny
I don’t know about going downhill in general, but there are some that use regenerative braking (regular braking, on flat terrain) so maybe
An early version of the Petřín ropeway in Prague used to contain tanks in both cars. The upper one would be filled with
sewagecollected rainwater from the city’s hilltop quarter and the energy of the descent was used to pull the other car up. Additionally, the way up cost twice as much so there was an incentive to ascend on foot, which was about as fast despite the incline.Most mines are underground so for most this can’t work, but where it does they are sure to use it.
Regular trains don’t run underground. Lots of opencast mines exist .
Basically all mines have an above ground terminal where whatever you mined is unloaded from your underground trains, lifts, haul trucks or whatever else onto storage piles, then loaded onto the actual long distance trains.
If the mine entry is up a mountain, then the trip down from that point will be a net energy producer regardless of anything else.
Content aside, what a great video! It’s not that old of a video but it reminds me so much of early YouTube, just friends messing around and posting it with top tier song choice.
Damn, that shit is even hotter
You just toss it when the battery dies and get a new one.
Perfection is the enemy of the good; climate change is even worse.
Click bait that actually makes me glad I clicked???
Wow what a great use case.
Reminds of this bucket-line system
Not very smart that they waste all that energy in mechanical brakes. See my comment (the one with the picture) for a way bigger and electricity-generating ropeway, including a video of a guy less squeamish than Tom Scott riding most of the 45-minute way up.
WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS TOM SCOTT SLANDER
He literally has
Filmed safely: https://www.tomscott.com/safe/
in the description. Meanwhile, that fat dude from Vrchlabí jumped into a moving bucket of one that is faster, 2.5x longer, at deadly height, and his only plan of getting down safely was a mattress. He acknowledged how illegal and dangerous it is and yet publishes the video with his full name.
Just accept it, Tom Scott was being way more cautious.
firstly I was joking
secondly, cautious ≠ squeamish. we shouldn’t be setting masculinity as an example
I’m pretty sure they’ve been doing this for years in South America already.
well that was unexpected
I’m curious if the desgin team knew about it in advance
Are you asking if Swiss guys knew about mountains? )
hahaha guess it boils down to that 😂
but I was specifically wondering if they built the vehicle with a charger and ended up never using it, to their own surprise. or if they knew they’d (almost) never have to charge it
Must have a cable somewhere as a backup otherwise you’d need a full battery replacement should it ever be discharged.
Gonna go ahead and guess that when designing a 110 ton mega dump truck things are probably pretty front loaded on the planning side of things.
I cannot avoid to be pedantic on this, it is recharged during half the trip… it just does not require plug-like recharging
Yeah another clickbait headline. It’s getting recharged all the time, it’s just very lucky to be in a use case where it goes down hills with large loads all the time
It’s more than a clickbait headline, the first paragraph is just flat out wrong:
Perhaps best of all, it consumes no energy doing it.
Obviously it’s consuming energy going uphill. Just because the power source is gravity doesn’t mean it’s not consuming energy.
Till elon finds out that if he manages to cover the sun, he can charge us on sunscription
“World’s largest EV”
Blatantly untrue. Larger EVs have been in use for more than a century at this point in the form of EMU trains.
I’ll pick up the pedantic torch. Trains are made of train cars, I’d argue each one is a separate car or vehicle even though they’re strapped together.
I feel like The ISS ticks a lot of the boxes for a vehicle though, how big is that?
This will conversation evolve into two things: are hotdogs and tacos sammiches, and we becoming crabs.
Very cool! It’s a pretty specialized use case, but still awesome to see.
“EDumper” is a great name for a dump truck.
Also my shiny metal ass
Cool EV bruh, but can the horn make a fart noise?
2017
At 50 tons and 700 kilowatt-hours, this truck is the biggest EV in the world Each round trip will generate 10kWh of spare electricity for the grid.
I hope OpenTTD devs consider adding gravity-based electric transportation of heavy loads as an option
Very interesting use case but kind of dependant on this very specific setup? I feel like an even more efficient and low maintenance method would be like… a ramp.
