I wonder how the dissipative losses on this technology compare to just pumping water up into a reservoir behind a dam. Because in theory the most simple way of storing potential energy that is also scalable without too much effort (you can use valleys in the natural landscape as a container, you don’t need to build everything from scratch) is transferring large masses of water from a lower to a higher elevation. But the problem with that has always been friction/heat losses, which can be quite an issue whenever you try to replace chemical batteries with a physical energy storage.
Either way this will be fascinating to keep an eye on, if chemical batteries can be replaced by a much cheaper and more scalable option that would be a huge win for renewables.
Finding the correct landscape is not impossible, but it’s definitely not an easy thing to do. If you can deploy a gravity battery directly next to the industrial area of a city, you have a lot of advantages. Moreso if you can charge that gravity battery from a river flowing past the industrial area.
Edit: same could be said for deploying a chemical battery
I wonder how the dissipative losses on this technology compare to just pumping water up into a reservoir behind a dam. Because in theory the most simple way of storing potential energy that is also scalable without too much effort (you can use valleys in the natural landscape as a container, you don’t need to build everything from scratch) is transferring large masses of water from a lower to a higher elevation. But the problem with that has always been friction/heat losses, which can be quite an issue whenever you try to replace chemical batteries with a physical energy storage.
Either way this will be fascinating to keep an eye on, if chemical batteries can be replaced by a much cheaper and more scalable option that would be a huge win for renewables.
Finding the correct landscape is not impossible, but it’s definitely not an easy thing to do. If you can deploy a gravity battery directly next to the industrial area of a city, you have a lot of advantages. Moreso if you can charge that gravity battery from a river flowing past the industrial area.
Edit: same could be said for deploying a chemical battery
That’s a very good point.