Researchers have come up with a new way to store electricity in cement

https://www.science.org/content/article/electrified-cement-could-turn-houses-and-roads-nearly-limitless-batteries

by rmason • 3 years ago

91 57 3 years ago

I am curious, how does this material react to lightning? Does it overcharge and burn up or just stop storing power? One can test this with a long enamel coated wire and a model rocket on a stormy day to induce a lightning strike.

hnisg4y4• 3 years ago

Why does the lightning hit the rocket instead of an antenna that's a lower height than the rocket?

Where does energy want to flow, to a higher concentration of energy or a lower concentration?

LinuxBender4• 3 years ago

The lightning hits the enamel wire attached to the rocket and flows from positively charged earth to the negatively charged cloud. One can find videos of people doing this on youtube but I do not have any links handy.

I am more curious what this does to the concrete as it is not uncommon for lightning rods to be grounded to a grounding rod that is in the building's concrete foundation. I think this should be tested prior to mass adoption.

barbariangrunge2• 3 years ago

My wife's coworker saw a cow go flying into the air last year when lightning struck nearby. Does lightning dissipate perfectly harmlessly when something taller is struck nearby? Actually curious

shagie• 3 years ago

(Aside: https://practical.engineering just released a video on "Where Does Grounded Electricity Actually Go?" )

LinuxBender4• 3 years ago

Proof he is a time traveler that reads HN. I enjoy his videos. Maybe he can play around with this concrete.

barbariangrunge2• 3 years ago

The cities are already perpetually under construction/maintenance and still, there's decade-old potholes in some places. Electrified cement: how much more maintenance effort will that take? Are the economic and environmental benefits worth it? It could be

Also, if it's a smart city and big tech is involved, think of the scale of the planned obsolescence issues

wudangmonk• 3 years ago

This has to be a racket to extract as much public money as possible. At least in the US and in most cities I have been, projects take years and they usually only send a few guys to work on it about once per week. A few years later they suddenly finish everything in a few months.

mulmen• 3 years ago

Are those workers at home or are they at other job sites with closer deadlines? In other words, is the squeaky wheel getting all the grease?

TechBro8615• 3 years ago

In software, projects take years and they usually send a few guys to work on it for eight hours every day. A few years later they suddenly decide to rewrite everything and never finish it.

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

Really it comes down to allocation of (affordle) resourcing and the bidding process construction companies have to do for the cities.

Typically the teams you see are being split between several projects and one construction project mnanager is managing several projects.

Then throw in city permitting and inspections which take an awful amount of time and expense.

Is there a reason it's slow? Yes, they're trying to keep budgets low. However there isn't a reason it needs to be slow.

When there's a political will and cultural to do it fast and safely, it gets done. That bridge collapse in Philly on i95 took like 10 days to repair. It also probably cost a lot to repair as well but there was a political will to do it because of how critical that infrastructure is.

Same goes for bridges and highways on California destroyed by earthquakes or landslides. Those get rebuilt quickly but the cost to do so is very high.

Retric• 3 years ago

That’s generally optimizing for cost over speed, empty sites are cheap and going slow tends to save money. It also lets the company constantly move people through a backlog of projects at different locations rather than adding a few people then having breaks in work where you have to let people go.

There is also real physical limitations when moving dirt around. If you quickly make a big pile it settle quite a bit. So instead you add a few inches at a time and bring out heavy equipment then let it settle, do some tests, and repeat.

https://youtu.be/22W5tRWbUVI

Supermancho• 3 years ago

The cities are already perpetually under construction/maintenance and still, there's decade-old potholes in some places.

Talk about endless construction, see London. Improvements come gradually with new construction, then the old are propped up/covered up/stripped-and-refaced as long as they are useful and upgraded when convenient.

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

The UK is astronomical with how it does their permitting, planning, and PM.

Oxford's wolvercote roundabout took like 3 or 4 years to complete for what could have amounted to a year of work for any American crew.

Want to hear a joke? Skanska workers working.

wilg• 3 years ago

I think it is reasonable to expect a city to be perpetually under construction and maintenance.

tortoise_in• 3 years ago

What about flood like situations?

_Microft• 3 years ago

Researchers have come up with a new way to store electricity in cement

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