Gravity Battery Control System

A translating-drum spooling system and feedback controller designed to reduce cable wear and lower winch cost for Renewell's gravity battery platform.

Final report
  • Arduino
  • PID Control
  • CAD
  • Mechanical Prototyping

Gallery

Summary

This project was completed with Renewell, which is a startup repurposing abandoned oil wells into gravity batteries. The winch in Renewell's system has to spool and unspool large cable repeatedly, and the existing approach created wear that threatened the long-term economics of the platform.

We designed a translating-drum spooling system that moves the drum laterally as the cable winds. We built a 1/5-scale prototype, and used encoder feedback with a PID-style controller to coordinate drum rotation with translation.

My role was designing the control system, creating the CAD, assembly, and testing.

Interactive CAD model of the translating-drum winch assembly used to package the spool, frame, translation rail, motor, and cable path.
Prototype spooling test used to check cable spacing.