A company named Energy Vault is quietly building a brick battery near Milan, Italy. Their technology is quite simple. Use surplus energy to lift weights during off-peak demand. Lower them down to spin generators when demand is high. However, this time the gravity bricks weigh 35 metric tons each so this is no laboratory experiment.
How the Gravity Bricks Form Part of a Broader Vision
“We imagine a world in which science and the deepest respect for our natural resources herald a new, creative approach. A technological one,” Swiss company Energy Vault imagines “providing clean, renewable energy that truly satisfies the needs of all its stakeholders.”
It believes energy storage holds the key to this vision. It therefore wants to upscale it with its remarkable storage gravity bricks. To prove this point it is building a full-scale commercial demo in a city south of Milan in Italy. Energy Vault hopes to leapfrog over current limitations of regular storage batteries and prove how to meet the challenge.
How the Gravity System Will Work in Practice
Firstly, whenever there’s surplus energy from wind or solar farms, software orders giant cranes to lift and stack the gravity bricks. This creates stored energy through ‘elevation gain’. Then, when the grid is in short supply the software lowers the bricks down in turn using the force of gravity.
This releases kinetic energy to drive generators and make electrical energy. The software-driven system can react in milliseconds without human intervention. And raise and reassemble the lowered blocks when demand falls again. Energy Vault optimistically speaks of building 1,200 of these towers as tall as wind turbines are.
They believe they could complete the cranes within three months, while a service provider makes the bricks using concrete construction debris. This could be the way to go because Energy Vault’s system seems faster than building mega batteries. Why did we not hear of these gravity bricks before?
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Preview Image: Energy Vault Tower Simulation
Video Share Link: https://youtu.be/itbwXMMkBQw
