12:50 “Overall the energy storage market is predicted to attract over $620 million in investments by 2040”. Seriously? That’s an extremely low forecast. Could have been a mistake and they meant billions though. Edit: CNBC has commented below and clarified it was an error and they meant billions not millions. Good on them for doing that.

Hear me out: Giant cranes moving around blocks of thermally insulated solid state batteries all covered in solar cells

One aspect not mentioned here is integration of the grid over long distances. Even if the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow here, there are other places where they will. If you can distribute electricity over long distances, that also dampens the peaks and troughs, reducing the need for storage. This process is already ongoing in Europe.

This panel can put out close to 100 watts ukposts.infoUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg when positioned in the appropriate southernly direction, tilted to the optimal angle for your latitude/date, and connected to a higher capacity device than a 500. The built in kickstand angle is a fixed at 50 degrees. Up to 20% more power can be output by selecting the actual date and latitude optimal angle.The 500 will only input 3.5A maximum at 18 volts for 63 watts. Some of the excess power from the panel can be fed into a USB battery bank, charged directly from the panel while also charging a 500. This will allow you to harvest as much as 63 + 15 = 78 watts.If this panel is used to charge a larger device, such as the power station, then its full output potential can be realized.

This is the kind of news that I think we need more of. Rather than telling everyone we're doomed, this inspires people and gives them hope.

Hey, I and my bald spot are in this video starting at 6:04. Maybe link to the video you used from The Good Stuff in the description, CNBC?

Alternate chemistries really should be used for static applications. This would have a number of valuable side effects. 1) The materials used in these alternate batteries are often common and cheap. They include ZnBr, SbCa, Fe, V and the up and coming Na batteries, 2) Most of the alternative batteries have much longer lives than Li batteries. Their only disadvantage, I can see, is that they don't have quite the cycle efficiency of Li batteries. 3) Using alternative chemistries for static applications would decrease the demand for Li and bring the cost of Li batteries down and hence the cost of EVs, thus making EVs available to a wider range of people. 4) Using other chemistries would bring the price of these non-Li batteries down below the price of Li batteries. They use common cheap elements and all they need is production volume to achieve very low costs. 5) Most of these batteries based on elements other than Li can be cycled from 0% to 100% charge without damage and hence all the energy stored in the battery is available to you, unlike Li batteries. 6) most of the alternatives are safer in terms of fire. They can be shipped, even by plane and certainly by ship in containers with no risk. Most of them can be safely used in a house (basement for instance) or in a factory. With Li batteries, it is wise to use have them outside, just in case. Extra land does not always exist for a battery unit.

Flow battery 4:14 Iron flow batteries 6:10 Pumped hydro 8:17 Gravity batteries 9:02 Thermal Storage 10:26 Thermo Photovoltaic Cell 11:09 Compressed air 11:58 Cryogenic Storage 12:04

There's a reason why none of these alternative storage technologies have managed to displace lithium-ion battery: they all have some sort of tradeoff. In this video, flow batteries are said to be "Cost-competitive" with lithium-ion. In other words, they cost the same over the long term. If their lifespan is longer than lithium-ion, then that means a much higher up-front cost. But look at their density: ESS needs a whole shipping container just to store 400 kWh, many times more space than is required by lithium-ion solutions. In other words, it costs the same, but is worse. In order for alternative power storage to succeed, it is not enough to merely be as good, or as cheap. It must either be better, or cheaper, or both. None of the alternatives in this video have demonstrated that so far.

Pumped hydro is one of the most efficient for long-term storage. Usually 80-90% efficiency. But the environmental toll can be large, if we can find good spaces for them (like mountains with low populations) this could be big for this tech.

About 10 years ago I was basing my university level student projects on the development of a FESS for use in the third world. My brief was that it must require minimal maintenance, it must have high energy density, it should be used for decades - even centuries with no loss of storage capacity or efficiency and it must be totally sustainable, require abundant and cheap materials and totally un-toxic to the planet - a challenging brief which only the FESS designs (or mechanical gravity based) designs come anywhere close to fulfilling. Over several years of development, we decided that it was much better to go for low angular velocity (

I have also heard of molten salt as an option. I love the idea of two lakes at an incline to each other. Solar can be used to pump water uphill. Also, rain water can be harvested to fill the ponds.

Always important to keep in mind lifecycle and raw material requirement. How long do solar panels last before degradation? How much steel has to be smelted to create a windmill? How much concrete has to be poured to create the base? Look at the NET product, not just at the end. Likewise, I hope the energy storage methods are environmentally friendly and low resource production cost.

Congratulations on this major achievement in the delivery of green energy! Thank you for being part of this project. Mega Solar Power Plant - Benban Aswan Egypt .

Videos like these give a good insight in technologies that one might not yet heard of.

Giant hamsters in giant hamster wheels -- now *THAT*'s the future of renewable energy. I'm surprised they missed that one :-)

Any legitimate analysis would include the ultimate costs of dealing with the toxic battery components once they lose production capacity and are tossed.

The most difficult task for energy storage technology is to overcome the influence on bureaucrats of the vested interests in existing electrical energy utilities. Even if an energy storage solution is better for the consumer, powerful lobbies to maintain the status quo will be hard to overcome.

This is what I love about the United States of America! A country that takes the lead in innovative research. I hope this technology becomes cheaper in near future. It will indeed free my country from the incessant power failures and poor energy infrastructure. Thank you America. More power to the scientist.

Pumped hydro is still the name of the game. In my country (Bulgaria) there is one of these systems (which BTW might be the largest in Eastern Europe), consisting of numerous facilities having a total installed capacity of 864 MW. This pumped storage hydro power system can partially ballance the only Bulgarian nuclear power plant which has 2 units with a total capacity of over 2000 MW... In Wikipedia there is an article about it called "Chaira Hydro Power Plant".

Imagine Energy Vault stacking ESS Shipping Container batteries. Long and short term energy storage at the same time :)

If electrons move through graphene like massless particles, this implies no energy loss through heat and the potential for a VERY long storage. Obviously, the most efficient battery conceivable would have this property. By twisting a long sheet of graphene densely into a cylinder-shape and isolating the edges well, you'd pretty much have the perfect battery, made out of pure carbon. It's just a matter of how long it takes to come up with a cost efficient graphene technology.

These CNBC video essays are a wealth of knowledge. I love these.

this is amazing. I would love to learn more about these systems. I wish i had a place where i could look into stuff like this and maybe experiment with it. Maybe i could find something to help push things along.

The crane energy looks like a disaster waiting to happen......

Keep updating this information as new technologies become available. Don't stop!

I really like the idea of compressed air and compressed air to liquid storege in the process of liquefying air you can squeeze out the CO2 or scrub out the CO2 in that process. There is the potential to have duelality of power storege and global CO2 sequestration.

This gravity storage method has been BUSTED by 'Voice of Thunder'

5:00 It would be 5kWh to measure capacity, that's the instant power delivery

Supper, mind-blowing. What a energy is eden in small knowledge.

“Hydrogen Storage” The video was beautifully made and informative. The only thing is that you forgot the hydrogen generation and storage as one of the biggest changes that will probably happen.

"We have to figure out a way to store energy..." We did. 100 years ago. It's called hydro-electric. Store vast quantities of water at a high elevation and run it through turbines. Batteries as a grid-level storage solution is thought of by cell-phone and hybrid car users who have no idea the magnitude of energy storage required.

5:26 4:07 I thought she would say graphene battery, lol.

Man, those lego-tower batteries building and unbuilding themselves seems incredibly silly, but is actually genius. I want to see if there's a way to get smart parking garages that work like this. If you park at a peak production hour, a crane raises the car up to the top floor, then when you need it back, the crane lowers it to produce energy. I doubt this is more practical than the current brick strategy, but it's fun to imagine.

Power Wauh´er - I am with You on this! Man, man! - we don´t need to crawl any much longer! HYPE!

Energy Vault wonder how wind would affect the placement of the blocks cos it would end up being jenga in a storm

"The sea was angry that day my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli."

Many people talked about the demise of the lead acid battery for a long time. But it never went away. We will use li-ion batteries for a long time yet.

Another major technology would be inertial energy storage. (Flywheel). The technologies most likely to be adopted, will be the ones with the highest round trip efficiency, and lowest levelized cost per kWh of energy storage. (the cost of the system + maintenance/kWh stored and expended over its service life) Of all of them, batteries and flywheels can respond the quickest, to sudden changes in supply or demand.

13:40 - 20%, peak demand means power (W), storage is energy (Wh). This doesn't make sense.

5:00 "Provides 25 kilowatts of power" I think this is a mistake because this isn't a measurement of capacity. I think you mean 25 kilowatt hours, but that's almost nothing, so I'm not really sure what you meant. Also as a side note those shipping container sized "Energy Warehouses" are only 400 kilowatt hours each. That's insanely tiny, equivalent to the batteries in 4 electric cars. From a battery the size of a shipping container, I would expect more.

I am a little upset that we are focusing on renewable rather than sustainable perpetual mantel or outer core earth's heat energy.. This is by my reasoning, the truly honest answer for limitless green energy...

9:27. That is an ingenious way of storing power, cool.

I still think pump storage is underrated

Energy Vault - when will it move past the CGI cartoon phase? Just sayin’.

Thanks for making this video!!

"The future is not a mirror of the past", let's meditate on that for a moment ...

6:53 That’s definitely Wheezy Waiter.

So excited for the future of energy - thanks for this great video!

There is an opportunity to change domestic electrical appliances over to DC, thus avoiding the need to use inverters to create AC power. Then it would be possible to encourage many distributed battery storage systems into people's homes. Lighting refrigerators and consumer electronics can all use this source. Cooking and laundry need grid power, but you can encourage off peak consumption for some of this load. Governments need to regulate to force the change here. If half the new build housing in the U.K. Was built this way around 100,000 more energy flexible homes per annum would start to make a difference.

Also, one could develop a geothermal battery for future electricity production for very large-scale renewable energy storage.

I think this going to be a real Occam's razor solution that we find on the energy front. The tech is good but expensive to develop and I have questions about its long term utility being dependant on fluctuating markets of material costs. I think the pumped hydro or the energy vault solutions will be the ones that stand out in the long term. Very innovative!

What about storing it as hydrogen? Small amounts of hydrogen can be stored in pressurized vessels, or solid metal hydrides or nanotubes can store hydrogen with a very high density. Very large amounts of hydrogen can be stored in constructed underground salt caverns of up to 500,000 cubic meters at 2,900 psi, which would mean about 100 GWh of stored electricity electricity.

If Shell invests in something, you can also be assured that its capacity to displace or replace fossil fuels is basically nil. It's the most basic litmus test for the viability of new energy tech.

VRFBs are the future IMO. Long life 20 yrs plus, cheaper than Lithium as vanadium can be recycled at end of life and no fire risk. Can charge and discharge many times over and can store energy for many hours making it ideal for the grid. The only limitation was the cost of vanadium due to its volatility, however Bushveld minerals (bmn) listed on AIM have the solution with their leasing model which significantly reduces the upfront cost with lower annual lease cost of the vanadium electrolyte which can be recycled at the end of its 20yr life.

My fear is that we'll rush into solar and wind before the energy storage problem is solved. Tesla building LI batteries in South Australia seems to indicate it doesn't really have a real grasp on the situation.

Probably the most useful video. Whoever figures it out in a mass scale, will be the richest man by far.

I like the idea of Tesla's virtual power plant far more than I do off site storage.

I stumbled on this as I want my Narrow Boat totally off grid. A mate of mine thinks I am crazy to go away from 240 hook up. I have peak 500 watts solar. I can also invest In wind power as my winter mooring is well a bit windy. Plus can also charge off the boat engine alternater. Twelve volt. I am not too sure about LIFO battery yet I understand they don't like the cold. I think this video is brilliant, so many good ideas, but I guess it is back to Beta Max VHS again. Exciting times.

Wake me up when I can buy one under 5k to store enough to go 3 days when there's a power outage

Cheapest and longest living storage technology is Pumped hydro storage.

Maybe few parts and: 1. Water electrolysis 2. Dividing H from O 3. CO2 from air obtaining 4. Methane producing by using Fischer-Tropsch synthesis :D

How about a gravity based energy system based on purified and refined sand. The sand would be sent from the bottom of the tower to the top of the tower through a series of powerful electric shop vacuums. Because of the mass of the sand and the height of the tower, it may take a series of several platforms for the sand to be moved to the top of the tower. Then the sand is allowed to be poured down the tower like it was being poured down a giant hour glass. However, instead of the sand working it's way down an hour glass, it would work it's way down a series of mills or turbines in which the sand would pour over. Instead of water pouring over a water wheel that forces the wheel to spin, here it would be sand pouring over a sand wheel forcing the mill or wheel or turbine to spin, generating electricity. Below the sand wheel is a giant funnel that catches all of the sand and below that is another wheel ready to catch the sand in order to turn this second sand wheel or turbine that will generate electricity. Under this second sand mill or wheel or turbine is another giant funnel that catches the sand and below that another sand wheel or turbine, and so on and so on. There could be up to twenty energy producing turbines until the sand finally reaches the ground. There may be virtually unlimited number of sand turbines, depending on how tall the tower is. This sand producing turbines could be added to already existing skyscrapers, one would just need a portion of the building from top to bottom sectioned off for this energy producing function. The important thing is that the electricity shop vacuums are powerful and efficient. So powerful and efficient that the energy produced far exceeds the energy it takes to get the sand back to the top of the tower. This system could be continually running to continually produce electricity. There would be no need for downtime, unless maintenance needed to be provided to the shop vacuums or to the turbines. This is not a perpetual motion machine, but the law of energy effeciency, where through the efficiency of the device, more energy is produced than is required to run the machine. This is the same as with fusion power that scientists are trying to make practical.

It will be exciting to see 10 years from now when the grid contains all these different types of utility scale battery farms!

Using solar or wind to pump water up hill for a hydro electric system is the most logical & most effective system . But it is essentially a gravity generator. You can lift anything with a motor. Even a heavy weight.

What about the double helix type coiled copper interwined like that of a motor to generate propulsion, can that by its magnetism be utilized in wind turbine or umm a ways to create much kore energy into a storage based battery with elements included ib li ion like graphene, quartz, copper, and a liquid able type base for negative ion and positive ion disposition? When in use of that some type of battery

PV ground bracket +Easy and fast installation without punch holes. Match 980mm-1134mm width solar module.

Very great! So glad to see solar items being worked on

this was educational, enjoyable and entertaining. I'd love to see what kind of loss there is in these kinds of batteries. I mean a lion battery stores as much wats as you put in but I imagine something like energyvaults crane would suffer a lot of loss from friction simmilarly to how hydropumps lose a lot of energy through ineffeciency.

Regarding primus power, look at KWH/battery volume. Primus is 125KWh/1.8x2.1x2.2m = 15KWh/m^3, where as powerwall2 is 13.5KWh / 1.15x0.753x0.147m=106KWh/m^3. Homeowner's aren't going to stick such a large thing in their house. It's scale is too large. It must be space efficient. Even for energy farms.

I really can't fathom why compressed air hasn't found a niche in the energy storage sector. Everything involved with it is low tech (air tanks, compressors, pneumatic motors). If it is all about storage of excess capacity wouldn't it make sense, after the Li batteries are fully charged, to store the energy in air tanks? I don't get it.

It is really cool to recognize in which kind of future we can live!!!

The tech for the 21st century is "Liquid Air." That's air not wind. Air is free, you can't beat free !!!

The saying is true to a point. When the sun stops shining the wind usually keeps blowing 24/7 though ..... I have designed renewable power plants that will put coal and gas on the backburner....😎 The Chinese have just completed a compressed air power plant that is excellent...

After thinking a bit longer, imo...All of the above! Location considerations expanded my view. All of the above 'IF' they are seamlessly linked together, yet maintain their individual integrity as a stand-alone company with contracts that provide locally first and foremost, and main grid tied to go out to the mass market. No MONOPOLY money for the uber power companies. Innovations come from a place of emotional attachment to an idea, and an iron will to get there if the reward has personal value in any form at the end of the challenge. An inventor that owns the results of failure vs success will endeavor to perfect the innovation, and as rapidly as possible Innovation, with defects can be 'purchased' but as with many careers, purchased inventors drag out the process 'till just before retirement.

When stars are forming, where did they get their collection of material to generate energy?

What about Graphene battery Technology ??? Did the world already forgot about it ??

We also need to focus on creating the power through microgens at point of use.

flow battery is the winner, install some fixed cell. if you want to have a bigger capacity, just add more tank. literally you just need a bigger boat. also they can be discharge from 100-0% without any degradation. they last from 5000-15000 cycle. if the electrolyte is bad just drain from tank and replace with new one easy peasy. also membrane for ion and pump is easily replaceable . unlike Li-ion require to disassemble entire battery

I started to watch this thinking it was a researched program on energy storage, instead it is just a forum for tin-pot companies to advertise and justify their thoughts. Very disappointed. Energy Vault has been shown to be a waste of time, so why is this included? You really should have done your research.

8:11 I see you in there, Python.

Its not so much storing energy it's what state to change it to for storage. The only state I can thing of is light. Light is both able to be a state of data as well both a creation / resource. Assuming you can create a input you that can take both state of pure energy plus use the data as a state of energy I think this could fix the issue. Light also the only thing I can think of that also have the ability to be easily redirected (Be easier to move power from point a to b) This would also reduce the over all cost of implementation.

I’m glad someone smart is working on this , because I have no idea what is going on .

Somebody has erased the word "efficiency" every place it appeared in this video, thus rendering the whole thing meaningless to nonsensical. We learn exactly nothing from the whole thing.

You left out another important energy storage method, Hydrogen storage method (1mW - 1000mW)

How would machine vision assist with the gravity-based storage system?

This is all well and good, issue is seasonal storage... The US in particular has very cold winters. There are two choices, either build many terrawatt hours of long term energy storage (basically will have to be huge dams in the Rockies, as far as I can see) or you need to build fossil/nuclear power to act as power source in the winter. If you go nuclear, you might as well not bother with renewables because you have plenty of power generation, if you have back up fossil fuels and all the systems to utilise them, you are going to make power very expensive.

6:53 The perfect WheezyWaiter impersonator.

Startup 1- "our gimmicky approach is the best approach". Startup 2 - "Wrong. Our gimmicky approach is the best approach". Startup 3 - "NO! Our gimmicky approach is the best approach!".

I don't really know anything, all those difficulties make me wonder if clean biofuel (of a EREOI-efficient kind) isn't in a way the simplest "battery" one can have for many situations, specially perhaps if you can have some sort of power plant design that makes it even cleaner. Plus innovations in nuclear power technology. Even though none of those really deal with eventual excess production from wind and solar, those indeed require batteries that can be charged by those, which isn't much the case of biofuel or nuke.

A more basic system is simply to connect the grids of as many countries together as possible. This will even out some of the fact that the sun is not shining in one area. If there is a grid around the world then the sun in Australia can make up for the dark in the UK. That is an exaggeration but you get the idea. Also, it will even out some of the problem of wind farms not producing electricity because there is little wind in a country. It is usually windy somewhere else. Very high voltage DC current reduces the amount of electricity that is lost by transmission drastically. Thankfully a lot of work has already been done in Europe to connect up all the countries. More work is to be done. We could probably do more work going eastwards into Asia. I expect that it would not be practical to connect up Europe with America. However, maybe we can do this by going all the way through Asia eastwards and join Russia with Alaska. Add all this into the mix of the battery technology on this video and a lot can be achieved. You can see this moment by moment on www.gridwatch.co.uk. This shows how much electricity is being used in the UK by all the different types of generators eg gas, biomass, nuclear, solar, wind etc. it also shows the amount of electricity coming from the different counties that we are connected to.

I've never heard of that gravity crane thing before. These are exciting times to live in.

That heat thing probably has less than 1% efficiency.

Amazing!!!! Thank you!!!

Why are you guys not discussing the most obvious, Hydrogen generation? If you use excess electricity to generate Hydrogen to be used later to generate electricity via fuel cell when the sun is down then there is no capacity limitation like conventional chemical battery technology? Chemical batteries capacity is limited with the size of the battery that is hooked up and adding additional batteries require more investments. With Hydrogen it only requires an empty storage tank which is much cheaper than adding another battery. Hydrogen can also be transported off the grid which gives viable options when the grid has gone down.

trailer containing so much energy as full gas tank - I smell BS, and that huge crane is on whole another level

Now this is the video I wanted to see

renewable energy prices may have reached all time 'lows' but I still don't see it implemented that much where I live. The local county government has installed solar panels, but I know that was done because of huge tax incentives paid for a lot of the cost. Plus it is a fixed building that will be there for a long time. Most people do not live in their homes as long as they used to years ago. And you never get back the investment cost when you resell the home.

#1 Generate power in deserts #2 Use sand for mass that is required in gravity storage #3 Use high ratio epicyclic gear boxes to reduce height of installations

That energy storage brick tower seems to be a maintenance nightmare.