New renewable energy storage solution could cut cost of energy storage in half
November 15, 2018Energy Vault has come up with a unique grid storage concept.
The Swiss and Southern California startup has developed a renewable energy storage solution using technology based on the principles of pumped hydro storage. Energy Vault claims that its system can cut the cost of energy storage by half or more of the current price, making renewable power cost-effective all day, every day, regardless of whether or not the sun shines or the wind blows.
Stacking concrete blocks can result in long-duration energy.
Presently, nearly all new grid storage deployments are lithium-ion batteries. These energy storage solutions are cost-effective for about 4 to 6 hour durations but they are not economical for ultra-long durations.
This is a growing problem because long-term energy storage solutions are becoming increasingly valuable as more wind and solar infrastructure is built. These renewables provide cheap and eco-friendly but intermittent sources of energy and require long-duration renewable energy storage.
This is where Energy Vault’s new system comes in. The company has developed a six-armed crane that stacks concrete blocks with inexpensive and abundant grid power. It drops the blocks down to retrieve electricity when it is needed, offering almost 9 hours of duration if the block is discharged at full capacity.
The renewable energy storage is made possible by an Evie.
More specifically, Energy Vault’s unique grid storage concept requires the building of a full-scale plant, called an Evie. This plant would look like a 35-story crane with six arms, which would be surrounded by thousands of manmade concrete bricks, each weighing 35 metric tons.
Once constructed, a fully charged Evie will stack the bricks around itself like a tower. The cranes discharge the bricks, dropping them down, which results in the production of power due to the kinetic energy generated from their fast descent. The standard configuration reportedly delivers 4 MW/35 Mwh of storage. As previously mentioned, this is roughly 9 hours of duration if the bricks are discharged at full capacity.
“We are bringing something to market that, for the first time, will produce baseload power below the cost of fossil fuels, and not just for six hours a day,” CEO and co-founder Robert Piconi told GTM in an interview. “We’re in a position to accelerate the pace at which the world is going to be able to deploy renewables.”
At the moment, the full-scale Evie doesn’t yet exist. So far, Energy Vault has managed to build only a demo unit at one-seventh scale. The demo renewable energy storage system, which is currently operating in Switzerland, is being utilized for testing to improve the design.
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Sounds like an interesting idea. Just one correction to your physics: What you store by lifting a weight and then letting it descend is (gravitational) potential energy, not kinetic energy. This concept is hardly new. Weight-driven clocks have been using this principle for centuries. Storing utility-scale energy is, however quite novel, and I like the prediction that the round-trip efficiency can be 90%–considerably better than pumped hydro or storage batteries.
May I ask, however, what is the advantage of lifting and lowering hundreds of small weights, rather than a few (or even one) large weights? It seems to introduce a great deal of mechanical complexity.
Thanks in advance for your reply
a low in investment would be reused lococmotive on reused track on a slope with loaded trucks,it would wind itself up using the grid and then release when needed generating power back into the grid as it descends with help of a guvenor
As a layman could someone explain why it wouldnt work [email protected]
all second hand material and built by navvies,,We knocked up miles of track in days in the desert
Smaller weights should make it easier to control output. When the sun comes back out, you don’t want a big heavy weight dangling in thr air.
Also the strength of the lifting mechanism would need to be much greater and the law of diminishing returns would likely make the cost of handling larger weights increase at some power of the increase weight.
This is brilliant if all you need to due is generate electricity back into the grid. You could also push the large weight up a tower, up a mountain on a cog, pump water up into a tank or compress a gas.
I am not a fan of solar, but these ways of storing the excess intermittent energy have always seemed engineerable to me. Batteries are dirty technology and we should move away from it.
A new concept on the use of potential energy mass under gravity as energy storage.
However, crane winch mechanisms are not designed for mechanical efficiency – probably 60% efficient at best. So a combined round trip efficiency of 36% might result (0.6 x 0.6). Not good compared to pumped hydro or chemical batteries.
In Quebec province Canada we have hydro power =zero emission and we have over power that we selling to the american state CLOSE TO OUR STATE AND AS WE SPAKE WE ARE IN DISCUSSION WITH THE CITY OF BOSTON . AT 8 CENTS A KILOWATT. INSTEAD OF 15 THAT THEY PAY NOW.
OUR HYDRO PEAK OBLIGE US TO SELL IT AND WE ARE URGING PEOPLE TO USE ELECTRIC CAR VERSUS GAS.
Louis JOANNETTE ELECTRICAR CANADA/ ENVIROTEC SYSTEM.
I hope Québec will adopt FCVs, especially with the enormous H2 potential. Seeing AirLiquide/Hydrogenics involved at Bécancourt is an encouraging sign.
In any event, Vive le Québec électrique !
Very interested for the farm uses in smaller scale
How small can it be built at the economically sound basis?
Earthquakes, Tsunami, Ttyphoon resitance sstructual support is a must for our need in Japan