The Energy Vault is a Dumb Idea, Here's Why

so apparently the gravity battery is back in the spotlight i've seen news articles about it pop up recently and now it's time to stop the script before things get out of hand this will be short and sweet but if you want a more detailed take you can check out thunderfur's video link in the description so what is the problem with this thing in energy production especially with renewables we have periods of energy surplus and energy deficit you need to put surplus power somewhere so you can use it during your deficit but how do you store all that power do you build a giant battery yes and no this is where the gravity battery comes in in this case called energy vault the concept itself sounds reasonable you have a bunch of cranes in the middle with concrete blocks lying around when you have surplus energy you use it to stack the blocks when you have an energy deficit you lower them down and spin a generator in the process here's their promotional video where the ceo talks about saving the world while stock music plays in the bank how to solve one of the largest global problems facing our planet today how to store renewable energy in both an economical and sustainable way cemex's solution eliminated the transportation sector so we could end the world's reliance on robert piconi the ceo of energy vault all right so why is this incredibly stupid first off the blocks there are about 10 000 of them on this picture let's assume each one is about 20 cubic meters based on how big the ones were in their promotional video that's 200 000 cubic meters of concrete producing one cubic meter of concrete takes 0.41 tonnes of co2 to make this entire thing you're looking at 82 000 tons of co2 emitted into the atmosphere neat there are ways to produce bricks in an environmentally friendly way though as they show us in their video but this would not be an option everywhere plus they look like they would fall apart much sooner also have you heard about this thing called wind on most of that promotional cgi the thing is next to wind power plants places where winds are strong in that place you have a giant six-sided crane with some very long wires and you'll be trying to stack blocks with high precision i see now this is where the proponents of this project would say the software software will handle it is detectable equivalent of i have faith in jesus the energy vault also comes with a 30 to 40 year warranty i would assume even shorter since that would be thirty to four years of banging blocks together according to the website the thing has the capacity for 35 megawatt hours so a single three megawatt wind turbine operating at say 25 on average for a whole day that's 18 megawatt hours now i'm no engineer but if i understand it correctly one giant tower of concrete can almost store the daily output of two wind turbines nice so this design clearly has a lot of issues that need resolving so let's do it first off the wind problem how do we stop the wind from blowing us around forget that stupid six armed crane design and use a giant gantry crane instead it's far more stable than a regular crane alright so we now have a stable crane but we haven't solved the wind problem completely the wires are still affected so instead of having this thing on the surface let's dig a hole for it there we go with this we solved the wind problem this also solved the second problem capacity digging a huge bit below the gantry lets you stack blocks much higher and thus store more power how come you people never thought of this seriously why even have a regular crane arranging things in a circular formation why not a gantry with a square formation it's not because the circular design looks very futuristic on the cgi right it's it's not that right the third problem is the blocks they are subject to damage and erosion and need to be replaced eventually we could solve this if we had a material which doesn't break or erode this is the point where elon musk would say this is synthetic self-fixing hyper diamonds and i say water so why don't we just fill our big hole with water put some water tanks on the gantry and pump the water up when we have an energy surplus and let it down through a turbine when we have a deficit come to think of it what if we just dug a hole somewhere higher and let the water down from there that way we don't need gantries or water tanks let's call this new invention pumped storage hydroelectricity there we go we revolutionized energy storage i guess congratulations thank you for watching please don't forget to like and subscribe and i also have a patreon if you think this content is worth your money and i'll be seeing you next time

Channel: Adam Something

Views: 4,404,234

Keywords: gravity battery, energy vault, debunked, busted

Id: iGGOjD_OtAM

Length: 3min 50sec (230 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 20 2021