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hideogumpa t1_j0mqosl wrote

Reply to comment by BeShifty in Switzerland’s Giant “Water Battery” Starts Working by Wagamaga

There's also the tower lifting concrete blocks, the pull a heavy train up a hill, the lift huge concrete cylinder storage... lots of ways to use gravity to recoup energy

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einmaldrin_alleshin t1_j0naiie wrote

Concrete wouldn't be scalable though, because the mass that can be lifted is limited by the weight that the mechanism can move up and down. So you get a few minutes of power at most before all the weight is on the ground.

With pumped hydro, any single pump and turbine can pump water between huge reservoirs. They can potentially provide power through an entire night or more.

So gravity storage with solids is more an alternative to flywheels and batteries, which have a much different role in the grid.

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jawshoeaw t1_j0o0jkl wrote

Concrete gravity storage has been demonstrated to be scalable. You just use more blocks of the same size. Pumped hydro is severely limited to areas that can store water without causing ecological problems. Also concrete doesn’t evaporate.

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einmaldrin_alleshin t1_j0othgk wrote

Producing concrete is an ecological disaster in itself, not to mention the cost. And while it won't evaporate, it'll break down as it's stacked and unstacked for thousands of cycles.

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