Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to store power in molten salt

Re:Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to stor... by beaner on Thursday December 20, 2018 @01:07AM (#18722830)

I'm pretty naive about this stuff, but wouldn't an easy solution for storing energy to be, just use energy to lift something very heavy into the air, and then extract energy when it's lowered?

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Re:Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to stor... by wyattpeak on Thursday December 20, 2018 @01:27AM (#18722904)

That's an avenue that's also being pursued, but it's not obviously superior to other storage plans. You've got lots of moving parts under high load, you need enough structural support to ensure that the top-heavy structure is stable.

It also doesn't contain a huge amount of energy - 1 ton of liquid NaCl contains about 700MJ of usable energy, you'd have to lift 700 tons of material 100m to contain the same in gravitational potential.

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Re:Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to stor... by lkb2k on Thursday December 20, 2018 @01:09AM (#18722839)

That is one of the ideas being explored:

https://qz.com/1355672/stacking-concrete-blocks-is-a-surpris...

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Re:Alphabet spinoff Malta raises $26M for technology to stor... by calebbrown on Thursday December 20, 2018 @01:27AM (#18722907)

Dinorwig Power Station in the UK pumps water to store 9.1Gwh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station

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