Re: (Worst) The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

On 3/18/2025 8:03 AM, James Nicoll wrote:

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
 In a future powered by springs, a corrupt and short-sighted
businessman plots to make the world even worse than it is.
 https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/some-get-by

"Do Gravity Batteries Scale to Household Size?"
  https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/do-gravity-batteries-scale-to-household-size
"Even with a 2,078-kilogram weight, they ultimately found that the cost of the materials used to build the prototype did not make sense for how little energy the battery was able to store."
"“We found that the energy storage capacity diminishes significantly with decreasing size,” Jarausch said. “The weight of the moving mass, a crucial factor, scales cubically, making it impractical for individual homes. This technology is more suitable for larger-scale applications like powering a city block or a small community.""
Gravity batteries are just another form of spring batteries.  Both technologies are difficult to work with and have corrosion problems.
Lynn