Gravity Energy Storage. Who's right and who's wrong?

Gravity energy storage has real potential to provide cheap reliable grid balancing electricity to compliment the ever growing volume of intermittent renewables on our power grids, but only if it's done in the right way. Two companies, Energy Vault and Gravitricity have both taken radically different approaches to the problem. So, who will come out on top?

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Energy Vault

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[westrim]

Energy vault feels like a crane salesman, a concrete supplier, and a computer animator got together for some beers.

[Jedward]

You've done the public a good service by following up on these companies' progress. Please do continue to provide videos when there is news to share.

[brendanwallace]

Fair play Dave. I love the fact that you circle back. Keep it going. These progress reports are interesting. Thank you

[paulogden]

I would like to know the actual number of "vertical mineshafts" available with sufficient depth, no water intrusion and other factors to support this. I think that will limit scale. I would also like to know the levelized cost to develop a virgin site under reasonable conditions, ie no worries about water infiltration. That number would represent a scaleable solution. Anything else I think would be less interesting. We can't rely on old mine shafts for a critical new energy storage technology.

[thumper]

Excellent content delivered in a quiet and understandable manner. Love the fact that Gravitricity is run by engineers too.

[Voltaic_Fire]

I can't believe that energy vault got as far as it did, at best it was too finicky & the next version isn't much better. The gravitricity mineshaft version looks more promising with a more controlled environment, fewer points of failure, it has a much smaller footprint, regenerative power is proven, and cheaper to implement since the hole is already there.

[jimprier]

Most mine shafts need constant dewatering to remove water ingress. This comes at a high energy cost which has not been factored into levelized-cost callcs

[sephiroth]

On a delta height of 360 meters, you get 1kWh/ton.
To have 1 GWh of storage, you need 1 million tons of weights to move up and down over 360m.
If your weights' density is 5 kg/l, you'll have 200'000 cubic meters of volume, which is roughly a parallelepiped of 100x100x20 meters.
This is why storing large amounts of energy with gravity is hard (unless you use water reservoirs): because you need a lot of materials and space.

[johnnytarponds]

Thunderfoot did an excellent "debunk" of the tower concept, and did mention hydroelectric as a form of gravity storage. I mean, wasn't very hard to debunk, eh?

[chuckoneill]

If they're planning to build a facility into an old mine, pumped storage with water is still better than moving ore around. Many old mines are full of water --- ground water intrusion is a major engineering concern in most active mines, many of them flood almost as soon as they're decommissioned, and the pumps are shut down. It does seem like an end of life mine already has most of the infrastructure in place for pumped storage.

[brookestephen]

I don't like the cube towers, since it's a total electrical energy loss to transport blocks laterally. It doesn't affect the potential energy, but it does drain electrical energy to move the blocks anywhere but up and down. This is a drain on stacked block towers too. Moving blocks closer or further from the tower core is a net loss.

[snowtaku]

Thanks, I love the concept of revisiting previous video subjects to track the progress :)

[yorkyone]

Energy Vault appear to be building a Borg cube, keep a close eye on them, is all I'm saying.

[DonHusum]

I can see how Gravitricity's system can be adapted well to decommissioned powerplants, but in the case of mineshaft would it not just be easier to use Hydro, pumping water in and out of the mine?
Love these videos by the way. It is nice to see how these technological concepts progresses

[SX]

I do believe that pumped hydro is ultimately the answer. It has been a proven technology with far fewer longevity problems than the mechanical wear and tear of wire rope llift systems. Respectfully, Dennis, KV4WM

[RichardRoy]

It would seem a good plan for the sides of mountains as well. I would point out that we've been using the water cycles for energy for some time with mills that run on river currents. Love your work. You seem to do a much better deep dive into what's going on than others I've seen. Thanks.

[TheReaderOnTheWall]

I love that you addressed "Adam Something" video on gravity storage.

[petersmith]

I like the idea of gravity storage, but I can't see this being useful for mass storage, say to get us through a period of gloomy, windless weather.
It would appear that its utility will be for grid balancing.

[psyeseease]

I would've liked to hear more about the energy capacity of such a system. Even if the results are positive it would have a very limited impact given that it has a ceiling already in the amount of existing mines. Even if the weights are heavier they can't possibly compete with the capacity of pumped-hydro.

[hgjustice]

i gave this some thought, and imagined it could be used out at sea for offshore wind storage.
just a few more appendages hanging off a tied together wind farm.
could even be the righting ballast and be as deep as where the farm is situated.
could even hang freely in some places without a structure to drop it in.