Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries
by desman on Monday January 11, 2021 @06:28AM
(#25727535)
...and using water instead of concrete. And then you get pumped storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... which is reasonably widely used and doesn't attract as much investors' attention as this "innovation"
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Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries
by kumarvvr on Monday January 11, 2021 @06:37AM
(#25727612)
To be fair, Pumped Storage is really dependent on Geography. It has downstream affects on environment due to having reservoirs where none have been and all.
It's powerful, cheap and long lasting, but not easily available.
One can't eat the cake and have it too.
Well, this thing also depends on geography. There aren't many places where such a construct would be easy to build: seismic situation, static stability for these enormous weights, winds (it's actually quite funny to see cranes side by side with wind turbines in their commercial)
Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries
by kumarvvr on Monday January 11, 2021 @07:35AM
(#25728070)
True, but the choice of available places for cranes is much much higher than pumped storage.
Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries
by baybal2 on Monday January 11, 2021 @07:49AM
(#25728187)
Just build water towers. 100m water tower is nowhere near as an extreme engineering as this.