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Transportation Power Technology

Electric Dump Truck Produces More Energy Than It Uses (hackaday.com) 99

The Elektro eDumper dump truck is being put to work at a mine in Switzerland where it's able to produce more power than it consumes. "The dump truck drives up a mountain with no load, and carries double the weight back down the mountain after getting loaded up with lime and marl to deliver to a cement plant," reports Hackaday. "Since electric vehicles can recover energy through regenerative braking, rather than wasting that energy as heat in a traditional braking system, the extra weight on the way down actually delivers more energy to the batteries than the truck used on the way up the mountain." From the report: The article claims that this is the largest electric vehicle in the world at 110 tons, and although we were not able to find anything larger except the occasional electric train, this is still an impressive feat of engineering that shows that electric vehicles have a lot more utility than novelties or simple passenger vehicles.
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Electric Dump Truck Produces More Energy Than It Uses

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  • In other news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by I4ko ( 695382 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @07:51PM (#59114462)

    A half-pipe delivers the lime by the force of gravity from the top of the mountain to the cement plant with no energy used at all.

    • A half-pipe delivers the lime by the force of gravity from the top of the mountain to the cement plant with no energy used at all.

      I'm not sure Shaun White [wikipedia.org] would approve of this ...

    • Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)

      by olsmeister ( 1488789 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:12PM (#59114536)
      so the dump truck is actually more efficient.
    • Yeah, but this is actually generating energy. Maybe in about 214 years it will have paid back the energy cost of its production!

      (yes, I know the energy cost of production of most large vehicles is a small percentage of their lifetime energy consumption)

      • I assume the energy cost of its production is more or less the same as for an equivalent diesel truck, with out its benefits obviously.

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          I assume the energy cost of its production is more or less the same as for an equivalent diesel truck, with out its benefits obviously.

          /
          For most of the truck, yes (chassis and frame and such), but the power plant is where it differs greatly. Electric drive trains are much simpler and lighter and more efficient, so you save over an ICE engine there. You also save on maintenance - because an electric drivetrain is so much simpler, you need far less maintenance - a single speed gearbox, if equipped, is far les

          • This alone could very well make it use far less resources over its lifetime than a regular diesel truck.

            It absolutely will, because for heavy vehicles, the amount of work they do over their lifetime normally consumes enough fuel that their production energy cost is a minimal portion. For a consumer auto it's around a third; for a heavy truck or bus it's more like a tenth or even a twentieth. For vehicles where fuel consumption might well be measured in gallons per mile, my assumption is that they are either similar to a heavy truck or bus in this regard, or possibly even cheaper to produce in relation to thei

      • (yes, I know the energy cost of production of most large vehicles is a small percentage of their lifetime energy consumption)

        Interestingly, this is obviously irrelevant to the point you're making above since that's a different comparison. You don't know the relationship of the excess energy (which is mentioned in the article) to the vehicle's "self-consumption" (which is not mentioned in the article, and could theoretically be in any relationship to the extra energy generated), so what you're pointing out here doesn't tell you anything.

        Let's see. In 214 years, it would generate 16.5 GWh of electricity. I don't know what's the man

    • Re:In other news (Score:4, Interesting)

      by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:44PM (#59114596)
      Which one used less energy to build it, the pipe or the truck?

      Since the pipe neither produces or consumes energy, it's never going to offset the energy required to build it.

      Which leads to the next question: how much net energy does the truck produce? Over the lifetime of the truck, will it produce enough to offset what it took to build it? Or even just to use less than what it took to build the pipe?
    • by vrt3 ( 62368 )

      A half-pipe cannot make the lime go over the bump in the middle.

      (The mine is higher than the cement plant, but the trucks need to scale a ridge in-between.)

      • by sh00z ( 206503 )
        Just put in a conveyor-belt slidewire, anchored at both ends, and buckets at equally-spaced intervals. The weight of the full buckets going down will lift the empty buckets going back up. No need for the environmental expense ov making batteries in the first place.
      • Of course it can. Gravity is a conservative force. As long as the destination is lower than the starting point, all you have to do is prime the system so there's enough momentum to get you over the highest point. You can recover that energy at the bottom (or any point along the path down) if you really want to because the incoming mass will maintain the extra kick you gave it.

        Other than that, you just have to deal with the slow down due to friction, as with any other system. For transporting something l

    • by Monoman ( 8745 )

      Add a "water wheel" or a turbine at the end of your gravity run to generate electricity.

    • Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday August 23, 2019 @06:32AM (#59115588) Homepage Journal

      Think about it. If a half pipe was suitable for this task, they would not have used diesel trucks in the past. The pipe would be way cheaper than a truck and fuel and maintenance.

      The half pipe only delivers lime to one location, where it then still has to be loaded on to a truck and moved somewhere else. Maybe at first you can arrange is to the lime arrives just where it is needed, but as the mine expands that is not going to be practical.

    • A half-pipe delivers the lime by the force of gravity from the top of the mountain to the cement plant with no energy used at all.

      How is this better than a system which generates energy?

      • by I4ko ( 695382 )

        Pollution for one. A pipe is an inert system. A truck of any kind generates pollution, even if it may have a positive energy balance at the place of use. At that is definitely not true for the place of manufacture.

        • Making a pipe is hardly pollution free either...

          And since they need the load to go up and over a ridge, you'd probably need something more like a ski-lift arrangement (also much simpler in many ways, since you don't care what the ground is doing.)

        • A pipe is an inert system.

          True, but pipes are often made of cement/concrete and producing cement is very CO2 intensive: it is responsible for about 8% of global CO2 emissions. Plus if the energy the truck generates replaces energy from a CO2 producing source the truck will have a negative impact on CO2 emission.

    • how would you get the lime from the mine face to the half-pipe?

      Not to mention that the mine face is moving, and also the over all topography of the area changes on a day to day basis so the pipe would need to be moved constantly.

      A dump truck is really just a mobile half-pipe.

      Your idea would be ideal if source was fixed. But in this case it wouldn't be practical.

  • Cement Plant (Score:3, Informative)

    by Cmdln Daco ( 1183119 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:00PM (#59114498)

    It delivers material to a cement plant. Cement plants and concrete in general are one of the biggest contributors to climate change.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • No, the Rain Forest was the two minute hate earlier today. This is the new topic.

      • Don't shoulder all the responsibility onto Brazil. This deforestation is uncovering massive cities and agricultural areas that were lost to reforestation over 600 years ago. The planet didn't "die" then either.

        Some people want to have /their/ shopping malls and then look elsewhere for somebody to blame.

        • Don't shoulder all the responsibility onto Brazil. This deforestation is uncovering massive cities and agricultural areas that were lost to reforestation over 600 years ago. The planet didn't "die" then either.

          World population in 1400 was (only) 350-375M. That might have had something to do with the world not dying from deforestation then.

          Also citation required for these massive cities and agricultural areas in the Amazon 600 years ago.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Add more French solar roads.
    • This truck runs on gravity, not cement.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Just dig your destination down, and you can keep making more gravity for hundreds of years.

          Or mine from higher up. This tech would be perfect for strip-mining the coal from mountain tops, transporting mountain panda carcasses down to coastal bush meat markets, etc. Maybe we would even use it for asteroids?

    • I recommend adobe bricks made of your own shit... for tensile strength, reinforce with plastic straws. ;)
    • by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @09:10PM (#59114654)

      I am glad I have shlashdot posters such as yourself to tell me when to become righteously indignant!

    • It delivers material to a cement plant. Cement plants and concrete in general are one of the biggest contributors to climate change.

      About 8% of global CO2 emissions come from cement and concrete. 63% come from burning fossil fuels. Reducing both would be good, but it's pretty clear which we should focus the most attention on, and it's not concrete.

  • Going down the mountain it is essentially a cart as Gravity (the curvature of space-time to be exact) is providing the energy to move the load.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Same reason we got solar roads and subs with icebergs.
      Its good green news.
      Regenerative braking good.
      Coal bad.
    • by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:56PM (#59114628) Journal

      It's an electric truck that goes up a mountain, loads up, then goes down a mountain - and charges up while going down.
      What other "essentially a cart" does that? Producing some 77 MWh per year?

      Therefore, by taking this trip 20 times a day, Kuhn Schweitz states that the eDumper produces 200 kwh of surplus energy every day, or 77 megawatt hours per year.

      According to announced consumption, a typical dump truck consumes between 41,600 and 83,200 liters of diesel per year. This way, this electric giant saves up to 196 tons of carbon dioxide in 365 days.

      Also, it's not gravity - it's regenerative breaking, i.e. kinetic energy.
      Which means that it is all about the MASS of the load in the truck and the length of the road regenerative breaking is used on - not the gravity.
      The kg*m part of the joule - not the remaining m/s^2, which remains constant throughout as the truck never once leaves the planet during the trip down.

      • by Durrik ( 80651 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @10:17PM (#59114794) Homepage
        It is gravity. If you look at the entire energy chain:

        - The Earth stored potential energy by moving the lime up to the top of the mountain, most likely through tectonic activity. The potential energy stored is E=mgh. g being the gravitational constant.
        - The dump truck converts that potential energy into kinetic energy by going down hill.
        - The kinetic energy is converted into electric energy (and heat, there's always heat and other waste energy) by the regenerative breaks.
        - On the way back up the electric energy is converted into kinetic energy and some potential energy

        I wouldn't say that the dump truck generated energy, it just harvested the potential energy that the Earth stored in that block of lime. The thing that is exciting is that its a new way to convert potential energy into electric energy. What would be even better is if they could dump the excess into the electrical grid at the top of the mountain.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          You know all that, claim to be a writer, but still can't spell "brakes".
          Oh you're a software engineer, carry on.

        • It is gravity. If you look at the entire energy chain

          See this is the Slashdot I like. Arguments over which force is responsible for the energy.

        • What would be even better is if they could dump the excess into the electrical grid at the top of the mountain.

          Not necessarily "the grid" but at least use it to power the machine that loads the truck.

        • "Generating energy" is commonly taken to mean converting some form of stored energy into a form we can use to do work. This is generally a more useful concept in everyday language than your implicit one of "creationg energy out of nothing", which is impossible.

      • Also, it's not gravity - it's regenerative breaking, i.e. kinetic energy. Which means that it is all about the MASS of the load in the truck and the length of the road regenerative breaking is used on - not the gravity.

        Yes, it is gravity. Gravity is the source of the kinetic energy which is why the energy depends on the mass of the load and the HEIGHT drop, not length, of the road. In fact the longer the road for the same height drop the less energy you will get due to frictional losses. The speed of the truck down the road will also be a factor since friction losses increase with speed.

    • Gravity is producing the force to accelerate the load, which would go faster and faster until it crashes into something with obliterating kinetic energy. This harvests that kinetic energy to charge the batteries, slowing down the truck to safe speeds. Yes, it matters, Toyota Yaris gets 35 mpg, Prius gets 50 using this. Big savings for transport industry.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Gravity is providing the energy

      What happens when we run out of gravity?

      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        The trick is the customer pays for the transport of the cement.
      • Then we don't need trucks to transport the load any more, we just tie strings to mining buckets and let kids run them over the mountain like balloons.

    • Going down the mountain it is essentially a cart as Gravity (the curvature of space-time to be exact) is providing the energy to move the load.

      If you ignore enough details, all automobiles are basically carts. And over one hundred years ago, there were electric, regeneratively braking trucks very like carts [hemmings.com]. The type I linked here is my favorite antique automobile so far; They had lightweight one- and two-ton trucks with two hub motors, and five-ton trucks with four, and with four wheel steering no less. They sold them as full electrics, and as series hybrids. The series hybrid setup was engineered to give them the ability to carry loads up hills

  • So the end result (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NotSoHeavyD3 ( 1400425 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:29PM (#59114568) Journal
    Is that you don't need energy to get stuff to go down hill since it already has gravitation potential energy.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The resulting free energy can go to support the electric trucks that drive out from the cement plant.
      With the cement.
      • Just pointing out it produces more energy in the same way as a hydro-electric damn, stuff moving down hill.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
            The trucks stop and connect up to other trucks, the city grid? Selling their free energy?
            • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

              The obvious answer is that they would use it to reduce their fuel bill and heat the cement kilns with it. Then they can sell their cement as low carbon cement for a premium to boot.

          • You explained it so well but then say itâ(TM)s not newsworthy. I find it almost unbelievable that you can generate enough energy going downhill to carry you back up the same hill. With conversion loss, this would be impossible if it were not for the truck being lighter on the way back up. Even with the truck being lighter, I would find breakeven impressive and they managed to even surpass breakeven.

            • What if three trucks going downhill generated enough energy for one truck to go uphill? Would that seem reasonable?

              Because that's roughly how much lighter we're talking - the eDumper masses 45tonnes empty, and 110 tonnes loaded. a 2.44x difference.

              https://www.msn.com/en-nz/moto... [msn.com]

    • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday August 23, 2019 @12:20AM (#59115022)
      If only people weren't so stubborn we could solve all our transportation problems by putting everything downhill from everything else.

      (Escher!)

    • by idji ( 984038 )
      BUT EVEN BETTER, they turned a lot of this gravitational energy into electricity.
  • by reg ( 5428 ) <reg@freebsd.org> on Thursday August 22, 2019 @08:58PM (#59114634) Homepage

    Now this would be a great plan to save all those US coal mining jobs! Use the power from renewables during the day to carry the coal out of the pit and then put it back into the pit at night when the power is needed! Kind of like a pump storage scheme, except with rocks! MAGA!

    • If you carry the coal out of the pit, and then put it back into the pit at night, won't that hurt productivity?
    • I love how you mock those abandoned by our society, its most vulnerable members. What's that part about in comedy, never punch down? You always punch up, to hurt the powerful? Nah, forget it. You show those poor people what's what! Speak truth to the powerless!
      • by sfcat ( 872532 )

        I love how you mock those abandoned by our society, its most vulnerable members. What's that part about in comedy, never punch down? You always punch up, to hurt the powerful? Nah, forget it. You show those poor people what's what! Speak truth to the powerless!

        +1

    • https://www.greentechmedia.com... [greentechmedia.com]

      This is more or less already being done. Except on rails for higher efficiency.

  • Misleading title (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@tedata[ ]t.eg ['.ne' in gap]> on Thursday August 22, 2019 @09:12PM (#59114664) Journal

    For those who are confused, it's not the dump truck itself that's built to produce more energy than it exerts. It's this particular job at this particular location that grants it that ability, where the waste rock is hauled -downwards- to a dump site.

    If it were put to use in most other quarries throughout the world, where the waste rock is hauled -upward- out of the quarry, the truck would need far more power than it could produce through regenerative breaking alone.

    Unless you like the idea of a dump truck that can bend the laws of physics. In which case, I have a perpetual motion machine I'd love to sell you.

    • Yes, that's worth pointing out. Also, large equipment uses a _lot_ of fuel to operate. Even if regenerative braking is only used in a relatively small number of sites (hauling rock down, not up), it should still be a big win in fuel savings and environmental impact for those who can use it.

    • Not to mention, this truck need to be loaded. I am guessing that the front-end loaders moving and pouring gravel into the bed are not electric, or otherwise capable of running on the excess power generated. I am glad this mine found a good use for the technology, but I doubt it is anything more than a rounding error in the net carbon generated in producing concrete.

    • Unless you like the idea of a dump truck that can bend the laws of physics.

      I love the idea of a dump truck that can bend the laws of physics. I don't believe it could exist, but I love the idea.

    • Unless you like the idea of a dump truck that can bend the laws of physics.

      How large is this dump truck?

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @09:18PM (#59114678)
    If they installed some servers on this truck, they could mine lime, marl, and Bitcoin at the same time?
    • Congrats, all the logistics and transportation "experts" that won't shut up about blockchain in logistics just got new life.

  • If this is true, then during an emergency (think 911), a building could be evacuated via elevator even if the power to the grid is cut off.

    • Not really. The potential energy of the dozen or so people you can cram into the elevator isn't going to be enough to overcome the losses in the system when you start pulling the elevator back up again. You would need an extremely lightweight elevator which can carry enough people to significantly outweigh the elevator.

      It's not completely impossible, but almost certainly not practical.

      You would be better off having a battery backup or a small generator to power your elevators in an emergency. Of course u

  • Well just like the dump truck itself, the story has come back from before empty and is going downhill fast.

  • Maybe it was even right here, years ago. It's essentially "mining" the potential energy of whatever is being mined at the top of the hill, so obviously not free energy even though it seems like it.

    • It is definitely an old story. And I'd bet the energy required to break up the stone and load it in the truck is greater than what is produced as it goes down the hill. If not, it would be really cool if the truck could come back up the hill and deliver all the energy required to break up and load its cargo.
  • Energy Vault lifts concrete blocks onto a tower to store energy and lowers them to release it.

    What if we built skyscrapers over super deep pits and suspended them in some fashion that required energy to raise them and produced energy as they lowered themselves. They could be built on a platform suspended by a bunch of cables tied to motor generators or turned into pistons suspended over a highly pressurized air chamber.

    Every city could become its own massive energy storage facility.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Everyone has to walk up the stairs, Communism style.
      That gets free weight to the top.
      They get a free electric elevator ride down.
      The extra weight pulling the other always empty elevator up?
    • Every city could become its own massive energy storage facility.

      I can already tell this city has potential...

    • What if we built skyscrapers over super deep pits and suspended them in some fashion that required energy to raise them and produced energy as they lowered themselves.

      The problem is skyscrapers are built to be lightweight. So are houses. I was playing around with the idea of using potential energy as a backup for my house ... I ran the numbers using ballpark estimates and came to the conclusion that 24 hours of backup electricity would require me to raise my entire house about 100 meters in the air. Not exactly practical.

      The proposed "energy tower" storage systems work better because if they were using something the size of my house the entire thing would be a giant

    • I believe the Nextflix Daredevil show had a practical example of this technology.

  • Um, they all are. I haven't seen too many steam locomotives lately. And anyways, I think aircraft carriers are slightly larger electric vehicles.

  • Yep, armchair scientists already screaming fake news and WHAT ABOUT THIS-isms.

  • I wonder if this could be used to store off-peak energy for homes and businesses? Raise a weight during off-peak electric power prices and let it fall, recovering energy during peak energy periods.
  • Great, now we can mine the mountains down for cement totally green. Save the planet!
  • That's the solution to global climate change: Tear down those mountains!
  • Oh, the CO2 being produced by the production of cement!!!

  • I rode a little cog railway up a hill in Croatia last week. It had counterweights that slid down a track as the car went up the hill. I guess a small electric motor with it. This could be used for the mine job, of course the truck is better if it needs to veer off a fixed route.

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