This is a “solution” looking for a problem
Adam something does a good job of explaining the issues with this design
It got me at first. Because “the concept itself sounds reasonable”, I needed an explanation of the flaws. Thanks for the short, informative video!
Glad you liked it, he has a number of other videos that are also pretty informative. I especially like his infrastructure stuff though.
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We already have gravity storage with reservoirs and hydroelectricity.
Thundf00t did a great breakdown on why Energy Vault is a load of bullshit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIhCuzxNvv0
I wonder who is getting kickbacks.
Energy vault is a scam, it’s stupid on so many levels that it’s painful. Yet yerer we are, again millions wasted, like Hyperloop
I wish them the best. But this feels weird. Pumping water seems much easier than moving physical objects
Are wenches simpler than big ass hydro pumps? Don’t know…plus you have to deal with water evaporating and erosion.
The level of effort seems comparable.
Edit: The energy vault design is kind of brilliant in its simplicity. I had to look it up. Its a building full of modular elevator shafts that have huge weights in them. Each one has an electric engine at the top.
Excess energy means they pull the weights up. When you need energy, you regeneratively break the weight back down.
So essentially it’s one complex moving part at the top of each shaft.
That seems much easier to maintain than a giant basin of water, pumps to move the water up, turbines to capture the output, and big ass valves to control the flow.
You can put these anywhere…water storage will be environment dependent for a lot of reasons.
I don’t think either one is better, just depends on the location and application.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Fair enough. If you find it simpler to operate. More power to you
But if you have mountains available, water does seem more practical
Yea, I agree with that. If the landscape is conducive to it, hydro makes more sense.
I think they’re both very cool chunks of engineering.
Are wenches simpler than big ass hydro pumps?
Heavy weights at the end of 100m cables blowing in the wind are incredibly difficult to work with compared to water pumps. It is why Crane Operator is a profession and Water Pumper is not.
100m cables blowing in the wind are incredibly difficult to work
They’re enclosed. No wind.
Well, at least they fixed one part of the design. The working model they demoed was open-air.
That’s what I was thinking. And, they don’t really give any reason why their design is better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxGQgAr4OCo
I hate thunderfoot, he’s a really annoying presenter, but I can’t argue with his science. He does a pretty good video about gravity batteries. I think his most annoying trait is he repeats an idea over and over and over again never letting it go.
Yeah, he very squarely demonstrates that pumped-hydro is significantly better at gravity storage than moving weights around. It’s simply a superior form of the product.
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Moving fluids is hard
It’s really not though.
We’ve been doing it pretty much since the dawn of civilization.
With modern pumps and a modern understanding of physics and fluid dynamics, it’s not a huge problem to design a system for pumping water up a slope.
So many kilowatts of motor power gives you so many meters of head. Check valves and appropriately sized pumps can allow for the movement of huge amounts of water. And with hydro storage, you’re not really running the system at full bore the whole time anyway.
Water also happens to be fairly dense stuff while being a fluid, so it can store a lot of kinetic energy in pretty much any container you put it in.
Brick of concrete also store a lot of energy, but require a huge building whose sole purpose is to move bricks around. Whereas hydro also allows governments to store valuable drinking water and get electricity when they need it.
The real question isn’t “why not build pumped hydro” but “why not build pumped hydro in Shanghai.”
Look at an elevation map of Shanghai and the surrounding provinces: Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui. They’re not exactly “mountainous.”
Then make holes. Pump there.
At <25m above sea level?
Hydro is easy, except when it isn’t
Really interesting! Thanks for the link.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_2.0_Pumped_Storage_Power_Station
? How do you figure? Fluids tend to leak, corrode/erode whatever they come in contact with and generally is a hassle to maintain. Pumped hydro as done normally with large dams is also damaging to the local ecosystem.
Interesting idea in its simplicity. If they can get large returns of energy close to batteries that would be worthwhile especially if using only local easy to obtain materials. What a cool system
Helps because it’s basically entirely a construction effort. If there’s anything China has a lot of, it’s construction capacity.
That’s a good point. China has construction capacity like no place else on earth.
I also wonder if the technology involved would make this more deployable in the global south due to fewer infrastructure dependencies.
The claim to get 80% energy return when the “battery” is discharged.
I saw that. Hopefully that is a true energy return and not some marketing 80%. Cool if true
Hey, if China wants to hand out money to scammers, theyre free to do it. I should go offer them this bridge I have for sale…
Here’s a hint china: lifting 1kg for 100m, without any friction either way, stores 1 kilojoule of energy. That’s about 0.25 Wh.
So, if you have a 100m tall tower, with a 50kg weight, and no friction, you store about enough power to charge my cellphone.
