Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries

Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries by newyankee on Monday January 11, 2021 @08:33AM (#25728635)

I wonder if these could coexist with solar farms in deserts and the concrete blocks are simply filled with sand and made there as a part of levelling the field required to install solar panels. A rough analogy would be the cut and fill process that is adopted while making roads. Similarly when a new plant is sited the sand is removed and used to create a storage system. The main idea is that it would reduce transportation costs and will share the transmission lines that exist for the giant solar farms which will be installed.

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Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries by kumarvvr on Monday January 11, 2021 @08:50AM (#25728811)

One of my long term thoughts on this was to think and mentally design a system suitable for one 250 Watt solar panel.

Assuming an average of 6 hours of sunlight, a 250 W solar panel can collect about 1.2 kWh of energy, or about 5 x 10^6 Joules.

In terms of potential energy that is

5000 kg x 9.8 x 100 meters.

Pretty huge for one solar panel.

I have been thinking about storing energy in underground storage tanks, with compressed air, but roundtrip efficiency does not work out.

Alternative method is to heat any material and use that heat later. Like, molten salt. But these systems are not suitable for domestic use.

Now I am exploring chemical methods to convert carbon to fuels using solar panels.

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Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries by algo_trader on Monday January 11, 2021 @11:43AM (#25731463)

An "obvious" improvement is to push blocks up, and insert new blocks below (yes, u need gearing, and maybe lean them on a slope). But you get quadratic energy per tonne.

Its amazing how much energy a 250W panel outputs. Imagine storing energy from a 1MW wind mill (free pole? ;).

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Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries by Retric on Monday January 11, 2021 @02:42PM (#25735166)

It’s the same total energy per bock. Their design starts out with 2 rings of stone. To simplify assume both piles are equivalent. The first layer of stones is raised by the width of a single stone. The next layer is raised twice the height of a single stone. The n+1 set is raised 2n+1 layers.

Starting with more piles means a lower initial height. But, the only things that matters when stacking is initial and final heights, and transmission losses.

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Re:Energy Vault – Gravitational Batteries by newyankee on Monday January 11, 2021 @12:38PM (#25732507)

Demand supply matching, reducing solar curtailment by innovative use cases will lead to thousands of business ideas. Although most still make sense at large scale and difficult to bypass the grid or apply anything in terms of storage at small scale like an individual house.

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