The demonstrator plant in the video: 15 meters height of the tower looks like the 50 tons weight only can move around 11 meters? That means that this system that cost £1 million to build can store 1.5 kWh! I hope you are all very impressed by this cutting edge technology. A li-ion battery with that capacity weigh less than 10kg and cost $200! So even if the 50 years claimed life of the tower comes true, it will still be 1000 times more expensive than a single Li-ion battery you can carry with one hand. This is a scam to trick investors that for some reason didn't pay enough attention in school during science class. So can it be used for short bursts of power then?: The "fast" drop, shown in the video, the weight drops at around 1m per second, so it can supply a burst power of 491kW for 11 seconds. However the claim in the video says that peak power is only 250kW, so that means there are losses of around 50% in the system, which is both ways btw, i.e. for going up and going down so in reality, a 5 kg $100 Li-ion battery is enough to replace this device and the tower has a combined cycle efficiency of only 25%, like Hydrogen fuel cell energy storage, but you don't even have waste heat here as a byproduct!! That is maybe still enough to make this useful at a local electricity distributer to mediate fluctuations, however to deliver 250kW for an hour, you'll need a weight 327 times heavier and the company is even suggesting a 20MW system running for 8 hours which would mean 327*8*80=208,000 times bigger than the demonstrator plant and it would need 4 times the amount of energy in, as you can recover per cycle, so highly wasteful, as I already mentioned. To continue the "number of homes" analogy in the video, it would mean 3 towers like this per home!. UKposts commenters and politicians alike: if you ever hear about this again, dismiss it immediately, it is a scam, in the literal sense, not only meaning sketchy or overly optimistic. This company knows very well that this can't possibly work. They are only out to pocket public money, to then just disappear when they get them!

Make a functional prototype(produces energy) and then calculate realistic maintenance costs. It better be seismic resistant too.

A promising alternative is bouyancy power. Instead of lifting something in the open air, lower a bouyant object like a big baloon in liquid. Releasing the object makes it float up and that force can be used. It allows for using a lot less space.

I work in the electricity industry on policy issues and it always shocks non-technical people that we are never more than 0.2 seconds from a full grid blackout. They never really understand the way the traditional grid depends on multiple layers of security margin and how intermittent renewables reduce that dramatically. We desperately need storage as that is the only way that grid can be truly carbon free. The only issue is how much it will cost.

As others have mentioned, just pump water instead of lifting weights. Turbines placed at the bottom of mine shafts would generate the electricity. Pumps would get the water back up to the surface. Mine shafts could have curves in them, but appropriately sized pipes would snake their way down to the turbines and pumps. All you need is the desired height. Also, pumped water shafts are somewhat impervious to ground water infiltration since you would already have the pumps at the bottom of the shaft. Appropriate lining, as required for sections of the shaft would keep water infiltration rate under control. At the surface, place a large pond to accumulate all the pumped water. Above that water, place your solar panels. This could be an opportunity for profitable cheap hilly land in Pennsylvania, with lots of conveniently placed abandoned coal mines and mine shafts. Valleys in those mountains would become the ponds for storage. Solar and wind turbines, if appropriate, would span the tops of the hills. GitRDone!

Sorry. This cannot work. I ran the numbers a few months ago in a discussion forum. Here is what I posted last April: The issue is the achingly low energy density per foot print unit area or construction cost. Digging a shaft would either have to be done through very sturdy soil (costly) or require bracing so that the pit does not collapse (also costly). If you compare with a well known hydro facility like the Hoover dam, and consider the figures, you can see how off the whole concept is. Hoover dam water head: 180 m Flow: 3300 tonne per second Installed power: 2 GW Active capacity: 19.554 km³ Reservoir area: 640 km² Cost: $49 million in 1931; reportedly the equivalent of $684 million in 2020 dollar This means, in the absence of replenishment, that Hoover dam could produce those 2 GW for about 6 million seconds, or almost 70 days, before the level gets too low. For the record, Los Angeles reportedly consumes 22000 GWh of electrical energy per year, which roughly translates to an average of 2.5 GW (but seemingly would peak at 7.8 GW) The largest solar farm in the world is in India, and has a 2.2 GW capacity (and covers over 56 km²) This happens to be a nice figure because it is essentially the same as Hoover dam. So, assuming that one does not have anything besides a very poorly flowing river but with a 180 m head, but with adequate reservoir capacity both uphill and downhill (about 10 km² area, if scaled from the lake Mead) and the equivalent of the Hoover dam power station that can be reversed to pump up the water, one would have a pair of solar farms of ~2 GW, one to power the actual day consumption, one to power the reversible hydraulic system during ‘charging-up’, and rely on the hydro reservoir to provide the power during night time, for an essentially constant 2 GW power production. (Of course, there are variations during a day, more power needed at certain time than others, but let’s just assume that it is regulated and balanced for simplicity’s sake). The final footprint for such an installation is around 132 km², 85% of which is solar farm. Interestingly, Los Angeles, as a city, covers 1302 km². Evidently, putting installations covering 1/10 the surface area of a city to power it will likely be done by finding suitable locations, which could be somewhat distant; high power transmission lines can allow the solar farm from not even be located close to the “hydraulic battery”, nor to the city itself. Now, let’s scale this down to this ‘crane and weight’ scheme. They were talking about 7000 blocks 30 tonnes each. They want to have a 100 m head. They want to use this operating for 8 hours (too low in my opinion, but let’s use their numbers). That means they would be dealing with 7.3 tonnes per second. 100 m 7.3 t compared with Hoover dam’s 180 m and 3300 t. So, their concept would be 0.123% of Hoover dam capacity, and you would need 814 such installations to compare. The cost for the structure of a building is reportedly between $35 and $50 per square foot - this value is for building that actually gets built, probably having somewhat distributed floor weight; this gravity battery would on the other hand be top heavy when fully charged, that probably means it would cost more, structurally, but let’s go with $50 and call it optimistic for now. The cost for digging a basement is reportedly $10 to $20 per square foot - but since a basement is only partly underground, the cost for a deeper well will be more expensive, as machinery will have to be lowered and soil brought up, etc. Interestingly, googling “cost for digging deep foundations” brings something that mentions ‘between $25 to $50 per square foot’, so apparently it costs essentially as much going up as digging down. So, you have this tower (or underground shaft) that will be housing 210000 tonne of blocks, and move them over 100 m height difference - the equivalent of 30 stories. Assume that you have 30 stories used as storage (i.e. story 1 blocks would be stored at level 31 when ‘high’, and blocks low at 30 would be hoisted to level 60) and we have a 60 story building. 7000 blocks distributed over 30 stories means 233 blocks per level, or 7000 tonne per level. Soil has a density of 2.65; concrete is 2.4. Let’s assume the density of the blocks would be around 2.5, as we have to take into account overall gaps, and the machinery to move them around, the tracks and so on. 7000 tonnes therefore mean 2800 m³. With 3 m height, we have 933 m² ‘foot print’ - essentially 10000 square feet. Time 60 ‘stories’, we have an equivalent of 600000 square feet. At $50 per square feet, that is $30 million. Only for the structure. To scale this back to Hoover dam proportion, we multiply by 814 - $24.4 billion. 35 times the cost to build Hoover dam. Again, only for the structure. No tracks, no lift, no power system. It does not matter if it is made part of an existing building or stand on its own; it would require its own structure to keep that weight up. That is why this project is ridiculous. It can never be cost competitive.

I still did not heard in this animation movie how exactly making weights solid instead of just pumping water makes it cheaper? Heavy lifts/elevators generally are quite expensive machines, while a water container is much simpler device, with the pump and pipes being the elements which require most service.

let's say we need to store enough energy to then produce 50 MW for 12 hours (at night). probably enough for a small town. 50 MW * 3600 * 12 = 2160 GJ - we need to store such energy. Now let's calculate the mass of the load if the lifting height is, say, 100m. E = mgh , h = 100m, then m = Е(g * h) = 2160 ГДж/(10 m/s^2 * 100m) = TWO MILLIONS TONS ... For a rough estimate - this is about a cube concrete 100 x 100 x 100 meters :)

Gravity batteries? Oh you mean Hydropower? What a revolution.

Water bag batteries are my favorite. You use excess power to pump water into a giant bladder, when you need power, you open a valve in the bladder and use a combination of having a slope and progressively smaller tubes leading to a tiny nozzle that shoots the water into a turbine , which spins and generates power. Its basically a different kind of gravity battery

My home is using full off grid solar power supply system for 6 years now, as I'm living in rural areas. Unfortunately, there's no stream/river near my residence. If there's a river near my house, of course I'll build micro hydroelectric. The source to get the energy is not big problem because I had 3kw solar panel arrays. Storing energy is really serious problem. I've spent much money to replacing batteries in average once per 2 years. Peoples said "go use lifepo4 batteries, they will much longer life span. They much cheaper than liquid batteries." Yeah, damn "cheap". Then I bought it. Guess what? No matter how good you maintenance them with all of your knowledge about batteries, they will be degraded too. I assume, they degrade very fast. I expect will use them for 5-6 years more. But at 2nd years, they started degrading. Lead acid/agm, gel, lifepo4, you named it.. I've tried all of these types of batteries. Agm is the most s*ck battery, they degrading way faster than I expected. I'm using agm battery for 2 years, gel battery is better; for 2 years and lifepo4 (untill now) still using it. Lifepo4 battery is the most complicated than other type of liquid batteries. Because this battery type build from assembling single cells. Need active balancer, very specific charging method, etc. The hardest part using this battery is to maintain the cell's voltage at the same level. Active balancer doesn't really help. It's impossible to make them 100% at the same voltage all the time. If one of them get in issue (lower or higher voltage), you know that you're about to draw your funds. Because it'll affected other cells, if not replace it asap. I've been thinking about using gravity for energy storage. And I'm thinking the same way too, the same as in this video. I decided to build small one. Maybe next year, because I need to save some fund for this mini project.

We have this with pumped hydro and systems that use a weight and a water tank to force water out by gravity in an Accumulator.

I've thought of this independently since I was a kid. I just wonder how much weight/space was needed to be practical

Here is another idea: Abandoned strip mines can be half a mile deep. They look like an upside-down cake. The deep part of the mine is narrow. The part of the mine at the surface with the earth is wide. So, put turbines and pumps at the bottom of the mine. An appropriately sized catch water basin for the pumps at the bottom. Build a "pool" structure towards the top of the cake close to the surface. That pool is supported on a foundation around the circumference of the bottom of one of the top layers of the cake. The pool is as many feet in depth as you want for your potential energy storage. Solar supported and placed above the pool. At the center of the top circle of the cake, you build a cone section that goes lower than the bottom of your pool. That is to set up a center of gravity for all that weight of water. A column structure going down to the bottom of the mine supports that center of the pool. In the space between the bottom of the mine and underneath the pool structure you put your electric power plant and underground high voltage transmission out. Now, drop water to the turbines, pump it up for storage. Rinse and repeat. But, actually, there is a cheaper way to do the above with strip mines. You can spend a lot less money in the building of the pool of water over the mine. That is, that pool that is just hiding the previously ugly carved out strip mine. It could just be very shallow. The reason for that is that it would limit the weight that you would need your structure to support. For energy production, you're just interested in the height of the water column from the surface of the pool to the bottom of the strip mine. Then, if you have land adjoining your strip mine, dig appropriately around the mine to build a pond/lake to any volume you desire for your "water battery". That additional adjoining pond is cheaper, since the land itself supports that water weight. That section of water is also connected to the shallow part over the strip mine. By doing so, not only do you get a nice new lake for lake front living, but you have energy storage in the form of potential energy between the lake and the turbines and now you don't have to look at the ugly strip mine on your land. P.S. I'm a retired Electrical Engineer. All we need in this world is some imagination. Come on people. Get it done. There is always a way.

I want something like this in my back yard. I would lift weights and carry them up the stairs into a large bin. I'd get a workout and also get some free electricity.

This is the more advanced concept after hydropower plant. Water may be evaporated and smeared out to soil and its specific gravity is only 1. If we use concrete with 2.5, then it saves space much. Also this system is more controllable in frequently varying power condition. However it may be more expensive than the hydro power plant in large scale.

Use tidal energy to raise water to a height...and let it out all day and night... ( Tidal is available only at specific times)..the water stored at a height can be continuously tapped.

The reality is how gravity batteries will not change the world.

I thought of this 40 years ago told a lot of people the big money power company’s blew me off. You could drill dry wells and do the same thing for individual homes.

If the top of the tower was able to rotate and you placed a vertical sail or blades atop it, the wind could gently rotate the weight array and add even more potential energy via centrifugal force.

Imagine this system with two balanced loads which collect atmospheric moisture at the top, then drain it at the bottom. It seams that a system like that could function with no artificial energy input and provide a lot of energy for a long duration.

I love the innovation and never settle for the current energy sources attitude of the company

The amount of maintenance required for a mechanical system like this is an absolute nightmare. Just ask any elevator technician. Pumping water back up to an elevated reservoir only has 1 moving part per pump.

In most cases, the most successful methods will be those with the least complexity. Pumping fluids and using train cars on a slope are both simple solutions. Where you can use train cars, your highest costs include mostly the grading of the slope. Everything else is off-the-shelf rails, motors and rail road cars. Same with fluids, but your advantage is only needing high spaces and low spaces because your reservoirs can be of flexible shape and location. I think as many have pointed out, the problem is energy density. Any gravity solution must be able to store enough energy at low enough investment to make it worth the effort. In these cases, its either a lot of cars or a lot of water. The solutions also need to compete with hydrogen storage when hydrogen generation is increasing in its efficiency.

I really like the principle. There are losses, however in the lifting and falling process. Friction, motor/generator coupling, it's the same for water systems. But I like the fact that you could build a tall skyscraper in a city that would take up very little ground space and produce no pollution. I think they would be more convenient than water systems. Combine with a Solar/wind setup and you have a winner. I also like flywheel systems. Magnetic bearings in a vaccum. I'm not keen on huge Li-ion battery packs. I think the best place for Li-ion is in cellphones and laptops. EV'S are over the top because, when they battery wears out, you have to replace it and that's an arm and a leg. But I think Li-ion bikes have got something going for them. And then there's good old lead-acid. Easy to make, easy to recycle. People don't talk about them much these days. They are used extensively in mines. I think homes and busses have a place for lead-acid. Anything big-ish that has floor space and easy access to recharge. Everything doesn't have to be small and compact. Replacing lead-acid doesn't cost an arm and a leg and you can maintain them for many years if you know what you're doing.

compressed air generators is also a solution. compressed the air during power production and use the compressed air to turn a turbine during off times

The prototype in Switzerland was called EV1. Today the system is called EVX. The first of these has been implemented and is online in China. The company behind it: Energy Vault.

Why does everyone keep forgetting about Geothermal...

My comment below is appropriate for mine shafts or other underground installations. But, it also applies to above ground setups. Instead of spending money on concrete or some other manufactured weight, just use water. Empty tanks are suspended up on the towers, just like the discussed concrete or other weight. Such water tanks get lifted up there empty. Now, pump the water from ground reservoirs up to the empty tanks up high. That's your store of potential energy. Then, when you need power generation, let gravity do its thing with the tanks full of water. Once the tank is at ground level, it empties its load of water at practically zero potential energy. Use some energy once again to pull the empty tanks up to the top of the structure. True, concrete has about twice the density of water, so that would affect the volume, but the cost may be less. But, actually, you don't have to be lifting things over and over again anyways. Just build the structure to support the weight that you want, pump the water up there and let it fall down pipes. You would probably make the storage tank cone shaped so the center of gravity of all that stored water is on an appropriately sized support column in the middle for all that weight. Then, pipes come down the outside of the support column. In the end, all you really care about is the Head pressure of water for the turbines at ground level.

who's to say it has to be completely vertical? It could be down a mountainside on a slope, the potential gravity energy wouldn't be as high but the material costs would be lower and it would be more easily serviceable

Pumped storage (call it whatever fancy name you want) has been around almost 100 years, it's simple easy to build and works. It does not have the highest efficiency, but has very low maintenance compared to almost anything else. It's already proven scalable.

I've worked heavy industrial for years, and the maintenance on this would very high along with a higher than acceptable failure rate.

I was thinkoing about that way to store energy for a long time... I find it still promising, but I think the biggest problem is the massive load gears are exposed to. Moving Parts need constant maintenance and replacement. The storage facility can work for decades, yes. But only if you keep replacing some components. Imagine what happens if whatever the load is attached to starts to rust...

Cables, motors, generators, bearings all will need replaced way before the 50 year service life stated. Using old coal mines bring a list of other problems and issues. Methane, oxygen, water, roof and rib supports all will have to be maintained due to maintenance requirements on your gravity battery. It won’t be cheap.

If only there was a material which can go uphill on it's own, easily storable, and can have other uses besides a random weight. Since solids are harder to deal with and store, a liquid or gas would be best. If only this planet had a prevalent amount of liquid that naturally flows downstream, and has a natural cycle which bring it back upstream. Also, it would be nice if all this liquid organized itself into trails when it flows downstream, so that we could use a large body of this liquid or river to hold it then release it. The answer is water, not giant blocks which inefficently store weight, and have to remain stable while releasing energy. Hydroelectric power is much better than this scam version of a weight battery.

I would think using something like calcium bromide and some liquid storage tanks, pumps and turbines might be more flexible. It would take something like cesium formate to be the same density as concrete but I think 1.8 grams per CC versus 2.4 g for cc probably is worth the trade off.

This is just adding complexity to what already exists.

Hands down, the cheapest and simplest gravity battery requires: 1) a 250' high hill 2) railroad tracks laid from top to bottom - any number you want 3) ore cars filled with nearby rubble 4) cable for each car connected at the top to a motor/generator 5) $100 worth of computer chips to run the system I guess if you don't have a nearby hill, you have to start to build structures, but a hill is free.

One thing to watch out for, slavery. I was working on small projects like this at the coffee shop I worked at in the 90s. My original thought came from the friction limiters to keep the doors from swinging wildly, those boxes with the hinged arm at the top of many doors. The energy from opening the door is managed and released as friction heat. I figured why not put the energy to use. I worked up many dorky contraptions to realize the concept, like clocks, fans, and the such. There are many sources of small energy release like this all over human activities. From doorways and appliances, like opening refrigerators and oven, to sound dampening floors, etc… Taken further, I thought, why not boost input, like make doors a fraction more difficult to open to gain the fraction more energy to the small system. Cars could drive over plates to “donate” energy, and the idea flooded, but then it hit me. This sort of idea leads to slavery. Why not just have a gym that uses the gym equipment to generate energy? From here the door to slavery opens up. Kinetic to potential energy devices exist throughout history. But then the thoughts of slavery and misuse of the technology freaked me out.

So how does it stay at the top? Does it use energy? Or is there a locking mechanism once it reaches the top?

Here's what I'm thinking... I think my 1000ft^2 home consumes an average of about 27kwH per day(electricity only). To store that amount of energy within a 100ft tall column, it would take 325,405Kg assuming a 100% conversion of potential energy. That's essentially 358 tons(feel free to double check my math) Heavy duty! Not sure exactly how much my energy usage compares to an Industrial facility, but I'm left wondering.... is this practical, or pipe dreamz?

We need to figure out a way to make basically free heat gradient that is tapped for power. Examples: 1. geothermal 2. Solar chimneys

We already have gravity batteries that require no energy to reset. They are called hydro electric dams but for some reason environmentalists think digging lithium out of the ground and processing it and transporting it is much better’s for the environment.

Problem is, the highest demand is during the day and we don't have extra during this period. Pumped storage was designed to collect the extra produced at night when demand is low. Today's renewable energy produces only during daylight and windy conditions. Unless you have an extremely windy nighttime ( which is historically not regular), there is no extra to save. Nuke ,oil and gas are the most reliable and work at night. Renewables will never replace the Nighttime producers. No way, no how, ever. That's the only period that we ever have extra energy. Hydro is a small portion in most markets and environmental groups are getting them commissioned, so it's a declining source.

The problem I see with these types of gravity batteries are "wear and tear". Using hydro, it's less likely that things are going to go wrong when it's essentially one hole full of water leading to another with the route filled with turbines(A bit more complex than that, but you get the idea). Gravity batteries as shown above however are far more complex and will require more maintenance. With it being such a heavy load in such a small space, you'll need to make sure every part of the equipment is in top condition, or risk the entire thing breaking. Not only that, but put it in the right spot and rain can essentially give free energy to hydro energy storage systems... granted, evaporation can do just the opposite, so it just depends how it's built. It's hard to beat water.

Flywheel storage would be a less intrusive option than mass gravity methods.

People have now build zero point energy devices but are still suppressed

Gravity batteries don't need to be made of concrete? Can they have steel frames that hold scrap material or resources in long term storage? (Dual puropse. Gives a place to keep things while taking advantage of their weight) Would have to be open air, can't retrieve containers off of structure when they are finally needed down in a mine shaft Water tower gravity batteries?

Many people are talking about using water only for the gravity batteries everywhere. But the possibility of floods in case the dam is breached due to landslide or heavy rain or earthquake or wear-tear over time also needs to be calculated and kept in mind. Not to forget that in population dense countries, the land itself is much costlier and difficult to procure to extend or create new reservoirs. And the native communities which is displaced because of that since most reservoirs will created in somewhat far-off from cities areas and near forests and hills. Plus with keeping a big chunk of land, the greenery that goes inside water will be rotting and producing huge amounts of Methane, a Green House Gas with a higher capacity to hold the heat causing Global warming. And anyway, dams and reservoirs themselves create a barrier for aquatic species to procreate and survive causing biological degradation. It also affects the farm fields where the finer silt which aids the production of crops doesn't reach and instead gets deposited in the reservoir slowly making it unviable over time. The hydrological solutions cannot be expanded beyond a point without huge ramifications and is not suitable in most countries which need to switch fast to the renewable sources.

The most mind blowing fact is that this is an innovation lol

Why not installing these gravity batteries near sea in Africa and combine them with water desalination plant ? When there's excess of power they can power a sea-water desalination plant to produce more water which in turn irrigates fields. Another suggestion: use some form of construction (i.e. rails along which a load is carried up) when there's excess energy generated a material (of which the before mentioned rails are made of) which creates more tension, and when the load is carried down (to produce electricity) it goes over a construction/rails which produces less tension. Alteratively use some gearboxes or set of pulleys to lift/lower the load at times of different amount of power generated by the gravitional batteries. We might also consider a system that (when batteries generate excess power) add/attach more load to the lift being pulled up and detach the load (when we need more energy) so the load descents faster creating more energy. Another benefit of installing these gravitional batteries in Africa would be ease of access to sand from which we could make a lot of glass, allowing to build greenhouses (tinted of course) where food is grown. Either way, there must be tons of use cases (beneficial to some people) to utilise the excess energy generated during times when gravitional batteries generate too much power.

My idea spent time working on this idea. Because you need a huge amount of weight, my research was on making houses themselves be the weight. In particular this is appropriate for houses that are in high wind areas subject to storms, because their weight makes them safer than lightweight wood houses. And along the coast where you need to raise them to avoid flooding, so having the mechanism to raise and lower also make the house safer. To increase raised height, you want to lower them below ground at base height. A full very thick two story concrete house could store about 3 days of energy, maybe more if you conserve how much time computers are on watching youtube videos.

Since 1991 I am using gravity battery of my own design, transforming solar and wind energy to potential energy of the concrete brick of 1200 kg weight. Must say, it is flawless and works without any expenses at all ( few bearings and grease so far) but efficiency is not that high. I hoped it would be about 30% but it is lower.

There is a gravity battery that many are not aware of . Its called a floating city. The city is built in a tidal area and raises with the tide.When the Modules of the city are lowered we create electricity. This power is for the city and excess energy goes to the grid for other use like land based industries . When the tide turns energy is created by the force of the modules displacing the water and being pushed up.

I got the idea from this and write my business plan for renewal energy..the battery store energy and supply to city, harvesting energy and store it and supply…I hope to present the simple concept using the existing infrastructure we have at the moment..

Seems like Norway solved this for themselves already, using reservoirs for storage.

I think with these solutions building it in deserts and wide empty land that is not usable for agriculture is important.

The problem could be charging power required is pretty fixed. The excess power has to meet the desired power range to lift up the weight. Whereas batteries are convenient to store. I believe having rooftop solar with a 10kWh battery for every house that can communicate with grid demand will be super simple and convenient.

In hilly or mountanous areas, you can build a ramp along the slope of the hill and use a cart that moves back and forth. Capacity could be varied with the slope, and dimensions of the cart and cables. No need for a dangerously tall tower with microgearing.

I'll need to do some math, but consider that groun-loop heat pumps are becoming popular for residential uses. They require a well--like cylinder to be drilled into the ground. Could the same drilling systems be used to drill for a gravity "battery" system for residential pv energy storage? It seems reasonable.

Decomissioned missile silos are also a prime candidate for this concept. ICBM fields also tend to be in flat and remote lands that are ideal for wind and solar, so having a close gravity battery to store for high peak or surprise draws is fantastic.

There are those who say it’s not possible to store sufficient energy this way. I say rubbish why on earth not if we put our minds to it. I’m sure the same people would years ago have said it’s impossible to make light carry data, fibre optic ! This gravity technology is a brilliant idea that could be put to all sorts of use both industrial and domestic, only time will tell but my moneys on it. 😊

I still have a problem with the way water is stored to be used for electricity generation they have a natural water source, so they dam it build all the needed equipment and you have power on demand .... what I don't understand is why don't they move down stream and build another dam and do it all again? Depending on the terrain etc. etc. it could be done again apart from the $$$$$ its 2-3 or more times of electricity by reusing the water multiple times ....just a thought !!

Not an engineer, so everything is totally IMHO: I don't think that storing energy in anything related to moving parts would ever be reliable and cost effective enough to scale it up to where we need it. Besides that, there is already that system where you pump up water and harvest that energy by running it through a turbine. Not even in the alps where you wouldn't have to build a structure for that simple task is it possible to run that on a profit. And thats way simpler than moving weights.

I think it's a great idea. It has a lot of competition other than lithium though. Fly wheels, sand,salt.and all the emerging technologies, solid state, nuclear diamond. I think it's comparable with sand batteries. I feel like there's a lot that can be implemented in tandem with the gravity batteries like radio towers and fire detection equipment considering higher is better

Would be interesting if this could be combined with geothermal in the case of a mineshaft, and offset cost from mineral resources 🤔

Repurposing of abandoned vertical mineshafts in conjunction with gravity as a power source is the most reasonable idea I’ve yet heard from the renewable crowd.

Another way to store energy is by compressing air into stainless steel air tanks for use in off hours. It wouldn't be cheap but it would be way less expensive than gravity systems.

Why not use the weight of batteries for gravity battery so you charge batteries while pulling up the weight and during peak hours you discharge both.

How about elevators? Could a small scale charger be put on every elevator to capture the descending energy?

There's a huge, huge loss converting electricity to mechanical energy and then back to electricity...

OK. I understand it better. Thank you. Underground would be awesome if it can be maintained. I have practical questions. How difficult is it to repair and maintain an underground energy battery? What about condensation build up that happens like in subways? Rust? Dust and dirt plaque that gets on the pulleys and gears? What about an earthquake? Would it destroy the battery permanently? Would there be dozens of companies that claim ownership or rights or the government owns it and wouldn't all those hands make the price of your electric bill go up and not down?

who thinks that pyramids might be gravitional batteries?

Use atmosphere as a source of energy⚡ Even a millimetre change will give us huge energy⚡ all over the world and it will save us from crisis of energy⚡

Water is the perfect gravity storage fluid, but it is often unavailable. Pluvicopia produces water where it is short. More importantly, water can create wind capturing the Potential energy of the atmosphere while cooling an area, producing wind, and saving the energy as latent heat. The book Pluvicopia explains the process for all these functions. It can completely replace fossil fuels and rapidly fix the CO2 and global heating problem.

What a concept, maybe if all of us bought solar panels and a few power walls, we could create our own electricity. Not to mention, draw on those batteries when ever there is power outage. We will have air conditioning at any given time as well as never losing our food in the frig.

Can the engineering overcome catastrophic weather events that could cause severe damage to a tower structure with all that weight on it?

I did some rough calcs on my part and when I compare gravity storage to lithium-ion battery storage, Li-Ion wins by A LOT! At 5:20, can you elaborate where did you get this calculation from? Here's what I did to compare: Epot = m*g*h = 50.000kg * 9,81 m/s^2 * 15m = 2kWh. So, Gravitricitys little port-prototype there can store about 2 kWh of energy, if there's no conversion losses. I imagine costs will be in the 5 digits surely, let's generously assume 60.000€ for the gravity battery. In comparison, the average price of a Li-Ion battery is around 150€/kWh. For a 2 kWh battery plus grid connection you would pay a generous estimate of 3.000€. Now compare 60.000€ to 3.000€ for the same 2 kWh of energy storage. Gravity storage pros: Depending on the motors, probably a lot more power output than the Li-Ion battery. Good for grid stability and fast reaction to load changes in the grid. But, don't we have much better renewable energy storage alternatives for improving grid stability? Like vacuumised flywheels, super capacitors on the uprising, large pumped water storage connected to the grids? Please add to the discussion, I am curious what you have to say about this!

Downside is that these new systems only operate at cost. With no big profits no one wants to invest.

An old law of physics states that ideally in an efficient system, power in equals to power out. But designing a system with 100percent efficiency has never been technically possible due to our limited advances in knowledge. What defines an advanced civilization is the ability to harness energy resources with 100% efficiency.

These systems have a very broad range of efficiency, with many under 50%, which this presentation conveniently ignores. This needs a lot of work.

My guess is that one day (hopefully soon) we'll arrive at the conclusion that large scale energy storage is unlikely to ever meet global needs and reach the inevitable conculsion that nuclear is probably the only way we'll ever get out of this growing global energy mess. And get on with it.

the project with cranes and stackable concrete blocks is silly, because if they want to place it next to wind farms then the wind will be blowing the loads of the crane, just imagine trying to align those, will be an unnecessary cost.

The most obvious answer is in the background of the Swiss Alp test site and the Nevada test site. It's the mountains in the background. The best example is of the coal mines where tracks are already built. In fact, if they need to backfill some of them they could fill the cars at the top. Otherwise the straight up use of filling the cars with a load is good enough. But using long steep mountain slopes is cheaper to build tracks than making tall steel structures. Even ski slopes could develop a method to load and unload weights on the gondolas going down to save on power.

Yeah. Another world changing technology..... Yawn. We all know how these go.

I love this kind of thinking, there are so many benefits from using recycled elements to reusing mines that were paid for decades even centuries ago. It will help advance carbon fiber and carbon nanotube technology possibly extending to a future space elevator. imagine a gravity battery but the weight is lifted with antigravity rather than excess stored electricity. The pessimist in me thinks... little too little, little too late. Maybe the next dominant species on Earth will be smarter than humans.

The gravity battery reminds me of the lifts used in skyscrapers and elsewhere. Americans ahould use these lifts as little as possible. Skyscrapers can also use transparent PV panels on the windows.

There's already solar batteries to store power from solar panels - if every house, warehouse and business etc had solar panels and solar batteries things would be a lot better.

It gives me hope to read the comments on this vid, lots of knowledge and many good ideas.

“It may shock you…” Yes, I do find electricity to be quite shocking. 👀

Even if this were to be viable, in order to produce adequate potential energy storage for eight plus hours per day you would need to input 50% more energy each day from solar and wind then just producing power during the day. Add to this the fact that not every day is sunny and windy. Considering were we are with our current production capacity, how to store excess production capacity is a problem for way way down the road.

It is essentially a battery that stores energy. You could easily build something like this yourself. Seems like it could be a better investment than batteries because batteries eventually wear out and you have the chemicals, disposal and environmental concerns of a battery. This is just a weight with some pulleys and a generator. Generators can last a very long time and are easily repaired. You could build the same system in your backyard and lift the weight with your exercise bike while you're getting healthier.

BWSSB supplies ~ 1450 Million Litres Daily. Using alternate energy to pump up water to a height during the day and releasing it at night and early morning will get many benefits. About 80% cost would be eliminated.

*True. There is not enough cheaply mine-able Lithium to service the worlds people. They predict $80.00 per pound for Lithium by 2035 and $270.00 a pound by 2050. Get it while you can!*

The best gravity battery is a dam, or two very big tanks of water with a good vertical differential.

Imagine how much energy could be saved if all unnecessary metropolitan lighting everywhere was switched to half power or off during off-peak hours.

New idea, similar principle: buoyancy battery: during peak times, use energy and a long cable to pull a buoyant object underwater. When you need the power, simply let said object rise to the surface. Although I'm sure someone has thought of this already.

Thanks and high respect for my university professor who teached me and other students that one electric tram need energy on uphill and will release this energy back downhill, and this lection was decades ago. Thanks to all my efforts during decades which lead me on an advanced concept which use gravity weight to generate energy on demand but heavy concrete blocks or wagons full with dirt can be lifted and dropped to generate energy when it is needed on so called "stationary gravity engine". The invention is not disclosed and will not be disclosed without partnering with a government which goal is energy independence and clean energy. Let government work now and not complain for energy sanctions. Energy is abundant but need the right technologies.

Doesn't need to be perpedicular to the earth's surface. It can be on an incline. The storage capacity/m lift is smaller but it can be installed on any reasonably steep slope. No need to build insanly high towers or rely on very deep mineshafts. It would need a kind of track and a very large bucket on wheels which would run on this track and could be filled with any available heavy material. It would probably not look very elegant having entire hillsides covered in large buckets on tracks running up and down the hill. But dams and basins for pumped hydro aren't pretty either. So I'd say that as long as you have water avialable and sufficient storage space for the water up and downhill use pumped hydro. In a desert or other dry area with montains or hills those dry storage solutions might work. But remember that with both pumped hydro and this system you need large amounts of water AND a large head to obtain reasonable yields. Furthermore, all these solution only work grid-integrated not as stand alone installations.

This seems like an overly complicated Water Reservoir. You could just make giant buckets, fill them up with water and use those in place of concrete blocks.