Concrete teapot?

[spread-tee]

True, but lift 40 tonnes a hundred metres and you have roughly 10kWhrs of potential energy, which is better than nothing but in terms of the Grid or similar it is quite diddly.

Desp

[Mart]

One block is diddly, as is one PV panel, or one wind turbine. Ironically, you can make anything appear diddly if you put enough 'energy' into it.

[spread-tee]

It just seems to me that to store enough energy to be meaningful in terms of the grid we are talking a lot of cranes dotted about which will attract NIMBYs from miles around. I don't see it being an easy sell TBH

Desp

[Mr Gus]

I remember the one in Switzerland when it was put up as a thread.
Have not seen any details on how many cycles needed to make construction carbon neutral, nor how many operations per hour it is capable of, or the typical answer of use in terms of anything. (usually the term capable of powering "x" number of homes) energy return, operating noise, working lifespan, anticipated servicing downtime per annum, where these are cited for deployment, if they can be "urbanised" (hidden) localised vibration & sound levels, running costs or anything useful in fact to take it seriously.

If it is successful & can be urbanised, how long before the footprint is thought of like many gas tower storage & got rid of because of housing profit on the land, or is this placed in the countryside where it simply cannot have the demeanour of a wind turbine but is in essence a large high rise & all that go's with it?

The "jazzed up" hyperbole referring to the "polymer based" cement like technology, ..hmm the same stuff they use to underpin cable car stations to the melting perma-frost in the alps then?

Yeah, I know we've pumped hydro at cheap times to the upper dam lake & that's expensive for what it delivers & this is a kinda variant on that, but where is the hard data on tower no 1 & how does it read to get this investment round rush?

[marshman]

Some of the answers are in the document linked below. As I understand it the "cranes" were just a test bed to test the feesibility. The actual "production" version will be housed in a 100m tall modular building. I too am sceptical of the claimed figures of 500mWh per "building"

https://www.energyvault.com/hubfs/EV%20 ... 09-051.pdf

[Mr Gus]

Thanks MM.

Modular eh!?..to be stackable whilst designed for plunging a weighty lift through a shaft I should think so.
To give some perspective 100 metres is apparently a bit over the height of the eiffel towers 1st arch.

Some down spout stone gargoyles would be a nice touch.

[spread-tee]

Some of the answers are in the document linked below. As I understand it the "cranes" were just a test bed to test the feesibility. The actual "production" version will be housed in a 100m tall modular building. I too am sceptical of the claimed figures of 500mWh per "building"

https://www.energyvault.com/hubfs/EV%20 ... 09-051.pdf

Back of envelope time,

500MWh potential energy stored with a drop of 100m would require a weight of 2'000'000 tonnes assuming 100% efficiency, that is about one eighteenth of a Dinorwig,

Practical ??

Desp

[Stinsy]

Some of the answers are in the document linked below. As I understand it the "cranes" were just a test bed to test the feesibility. The actual "production" version will be housed in a 100m tall modular building. I too am sceptical of the claimed figures of 500mWh per "building"

https://www.energyvault.com/hubfs/EV%20 ... 09-051.pdf

Back of envelope time,

500MWh potential energy stored with a drop of 100m would require a weight of 2'000'000 tonnes assuming 100% efficiency, that is about one eighteenth of a Dinorwig,

Practical ??

Desp

Well…

Not all the blocks will be raised to 100m, so you’ll need double the mass assuming a mean height raise of 50m. A cubic m of concrete is c. 2.5tonnes, so 4million tonnes is 1.6million cubic m, given the 100m height, gives a base for the tower of 126x126m.

Maybe the promoter of the project owns a concrete company? Maybe his brother owns a crane company?

[spread-tee]

Could be, maybe he has a few second hand cranes he wants to shift.....

One further thought, AIUI one of the real bonuses of Dinorwig is its slew rate, less than ten seconds from a standing start to full power I believe which makes it ideal for a black start of the grid, basically open a tap and whooooosh. With thousands of blocks stacked up about the place that wont be the case for this idea I would think.

DEsp

[AE-NMidlands]

One further thought, AIUI one of the real bonuses of Dinorwig is its slew rate, less than ten seconds from a standing start to full power I believe which makes it ideal for a black start of the grid, basically open a tap and whooooosh. With thousands of blocks stacked up about the place that wont be the case for this idea I would think.

DEsp

I would guess this might be similar: just stop lifting the block(s) you are currently raising and drop them instead. 40 ton blocks won't be going up very fast... Response time could be quick, but I supppose max energy absorption or output depends on the number of winches you have going at any one time.
If the grid/block thing has one weight per cell/silo/shaft then it will be a much less efficient use of steel, motors and space than the crane and piled up blocks version.
A