![]() ![]() BOUNDLESS GAME STORAGE BLOCK FULL“We expect to be able to achieve full generation within less than one second of receiving a signal," says Yendell. Testing should start during the first quarter of 2021. Its 50-metric-ton weight will be suspended 7 meters up on a lattice tower. Proving the second-to-second response is a primary goal of a 250-kilowatt concept demonstrator that Gravitricity is building in Scotland. Multiple-weight systems would be more suited to storing more energy and generating for longer periods, he says. Using a single weight lends itself to applications that need high power quickly and for a short duration, such as dealing with second-by-second fluctuations in the grid and maintaining grid frequency, explains Chris Yendell, Gravitricity's project development manager. These great masses, each one between 500 and 5,000 metric tons, need only move at mere centimeters per second to produce megawatt-level outputs. Instead of a six-armed crane shuttling blocks, Gravitricity plans to pull one or just a few much heavier weights up and down abandoned, kilometer-deep mine shafts. Illustration: GravitricityĬompared with Energy Vault's effort, Gravitricity's energy-storage scheme seems simple. Raised US $110 million in 2019 to build the demonstration unit in Ticino and prepare for a “multicontinent build-out," says Piconi.Įnergy Mine: Raising and lowering weights of hundreds of metric tons in a kilometer-deep abandoned mine shaft, as shown in this artist's rendering, could store and deliver energy quickly. The startup is confident enough in its numbers to claim that 2021 will see the start of multiple commercial installations. But that's not the case for Energy Vault's infrastructure. Battery-storage facilities must continually replace cells as they degrade. Instead of chemically reactive and difficult-to-recycle lithium-ion batteries, Energy Vault's main expenditure is the bricks themselves, which can be made on-site using available dirt and waste material mixed with a new polymer from the Mexico-based cement giantĪnother advantage, according to Piconi, is the lower operating expense, which the company calculates to be about half that of a battery installation with equivalent storage capacity. Piconi sees several advantages over batteries. What's more, the control system has to compensate for gusts of wind, the deflection of the crane as it picks up and sets down bricks, the elongation of the cable, pendulum effects, and more, he says. “That's why we use six arms," explains Robert Piconi, the company's CEO and cofounder. To maintain a constant output, one block needs to be accelerating while another is decelerating. This joule-storing Jenga game can be complicated. Then the system's six arms would systematically disassemble it, lowering the bricks to build an outer ring and discharging energy in the process. ![]() Bricks in an inner ring, for example, might be stacked up to store 35 megawatt-hours of energy. In action, Energy Vault's towers are constantly stacking and unstacking 35-metric-ton bricks arrayed in concentric rings. By raising and lowering 35-metric-ton blocks (not shown) the tower stores and releases energy. Skyline Starfish: Energy Vault's concept demonstrator has been hooked to the grid in Ticino, Switzerland, since July 2020. At the same time they hope to best batteries-the new darling of renewable-energy storage-by offering lower long-term costs and fewer environmental issues. ![]() So building new sites is difficult.Įnergy Vault, Gravity Power, and their competitors seek to use the same basic principle-lifting a mass and letting it drop-while making an energy-storage facility that can fit almost anywhere. But pumped hydro requires some very specific geography-two big reservoirs of water at elevations with a vertical separation that's large, but not too large. Pumped hydro storage, where water is pumped to a higher elevation and then run back through a turbine to generate electricity, has long dominated the energy-storage landscape. And there are at least two companies with similar ideas, New Energy Let's Go and Gravity Power, that are searching for the funding to push forward.Ĭurrently operational energy-storage facilities, which can generate a total of 174 gigawatts, rely on gravity. At least one competitor, Gravitricity, in Scotland, is nearing the same point. It's meant to prove that renewable energy can be stored by hefting heavy loads and dispatched by releasing them.Įnergy Vault, the Swiss company that built the structure, has already begun a test program that will lead to its first commercial deployments in 2021. This 110-meter-high starfish of the skyline isn't intended for construction. ![]() Cranes are a familiar fixture of practically any city skyline, but one in the Swiss City of Ticino, near the Italian border, would stand out anywhere: It has six arms. ![]()
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