Energy from gravity
By this I don't mean pumped hydro storage, where water is pumped into a raised reservoir, ready to be released through turbines, back into the lower reservoir. I mean energy stored in solid mass, which is raised when energy is cheap - much like the water in pumped hydro - and dropped to spin a generator during events of peak demand or network stress. Let's look at two recent grid-scale examples. First up is Energy Vault , based in Lugano, Switzerland. This project is entirely above ground, and uses a six-armed crane to lift and descend 30 ton weights. Here's their wonderful short video, which fans of Minecraft will especially enjoy: The funding for Energy Vault is certainly impressive: in summer 2019 they obtained $110m of investment from the mighty Softbank , their first energy storage investment. According to the FT (paywall), Softbank themselves will utilise one deployment, and Tata Power have also ordered another. The video shows the crane suppor...