Just a reminder that if a headline is a question, the answer to that question is no.
Wait until I debunk you by publishing these articles:
Is no always the answer to questions in headlines?
Yes but no.
How can you know the answer to questions in headlines?
No, you know.
Why is no always the answer to questions asked in headlines?
No. The answer is no, and that does not really answer this question.
These are pumped hydro, but with extra steps, more expense, and less mass stored (read: less energy storage). ThunderFoot did a video going through this in detail, he even used the crane-based one in his examples.
This is the question you always need to ask: is this new mass-based storage better than pumped hydro?
We already have gravity batteries. This “block tower” type doesn’t work in practice (no matter how many times they try it), because as they grow in size, they are subject to natural forces like wind, and that makes stacking the blocks safely a big challenge.
I’ll be happy to eat my words if somebody can make this a viable solution, but this isn’t a new concept, and this particular style has never worked so far.
They did test those block towers to see if they were resistant to earthquakes, and they were still standing after a test comparable to the strongest earthquake in California. Though I agree that compared to the other options available it does look way more unsafe and inefficient.
I do hope they get somewhere with this idea, because novel energy storage that’s clean is always a good thing to pursue, but ever since I first saw this idea back in the mid-2010s, it’s never materialized due to unforseen issues when it scales up to real-world use.
Is there a TL;DW for that?
When I think of mechanical batteries, I think of flywheel energy storage. Those can deliver a lot of power, but for a short period of time. Is this describing something similar, or something more novel?
