GENERATING POWER FROM GOLD MINES

Australian technology may help generate power from defunct gold mines in Kolar Gold Fields in Karnataka.

Need for such technology:

A drawback that makes renewable energy unreliable, from solar or wind power, is that there is no power during nights or windless days.
The idea is to address this challenge by relying on low-tech gravity.

How power will be generated?

Their plan is to find defunct mines, which often go hundreds or even thousands of metres deep, and haul a ‘weighted block’ up to the top of the mine shaft using renewable power during the day when such power is available.
This block could be as much as 40 tonnes.
When backup power is required, the heavy block will fall under gravity, and the ensuing momentum will power a generator via a connected shaft.
The depth to which the block can slip can be determined via a braking system, thus giving control on the amount of power that can be produced.
The same principle underlies the ‘pumped hydropower’ storage.

Benefits:

Using weighted blocks means that decommissioned mines can be put to use.
The environmental costs and challenges of moving water up can be avoided.
By using gravity as the fuel consuming critical water, land, and chemicals is dispensed off which other storage technologies rely on.

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB

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