British start-up Gravitricity secured funds from the UK Department of Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to build its second gravity-based storage project. The feasibility study is expected to be finalized by the end of this year. Contact online >>
British start-up Gravitricity secured funds from the UK Department of Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to build its second gravity-based storage project. The feasibility study is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.
Gravitricity''s technology is claimed to have a faster response time than lithium-ion storage technology.
Image: Gravitricity
Scottish start-up Gravitricity has secured a £912,000 grant from the UK Department of Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to build a 4 MWh gravity-based storage facility on an unspecified brownfield site in the United Kingdom.
The company completed last summer a 250 kW demonstration project, which was supported by a £640,000 grant from UK government funder Innovate UK. In this facility, a tower is powered by renewable energy to raise a mass in a 150-1,500 m shaft and discharges the electricity thus “stored” by releasing the mass to rotate the two power generators. The mass used in larger projects can range from 500 to 5,000 tons.
The technology is claimed to have a faster response time than lithium-ion storage technology and to be able to help stabilize electricity networks at 50 Hz by responding to full power demand in less than a second.
In October, Gravitricity also announced it was considering the deployment of its gravity energy storage system in Czechia, where it would be built at the decommissioned Staříč coal mine in the country''s Moravian Silesian region. The mine consists of six deep sites that could potentially host the storage solution.
More articles from Emiliano Bellini
There are numerous “Brownfield” sites everywhere which can’t be used for anything and certainly not to have people on or about those lands.
Making use of such for Energy Storage Systems and other “passive:” functions is certainly a good idea (provided it does not disturb the toxins). In one sense this is recovering the “space” and can also serve as a “capping” over the site pending on the use…
What was the capacity and efficiency of the small-scale demonstration project? It says “250kW” power, but that’s less interesting than its capacity.
Hey Steve, the storage capacity of the pilot project was not specified by the manufacturer.
The demonstrator at Leith in Edinburgh was 15 m and 50 t giving a maximum capacity of 7.5 MJ or 2.1 kWh. If it delivered 250 kW as claimed, then it would have done so for just 30 s.
Sounds like absolute nonsense
Building a load of infrastructure for pitifully small capacity
Please let the grown ups review it based on physics and hard nosed economic benefits and compare with properly conceived alternatives
Pump water up a hill instead – the engineering is much more straightforward straightforward and capacity scales much more effectively
It’s efficiency should be really good if they can sort the bearings and gearing in a viable way. Amazing how powering a domestic heater for an hour using 50 tons can attract such funding;)
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Scottish start-up Gravitricity has begun construction of a 250 kW gravity-based energy storage project at Port of Leith. A 15m-high rig uses renewable energy to raise a mass in a 150-1,500m shaft and discharges the electricity thus ''stored'' by releasing the mass to rotate an electric generator.
The 250 kW demonstrator is located on an industrial site at Port of Leith.
Scottish start-up Gravitricity has begun construction of a £1 million ($1.38 million) gravity energy storage system on an industrial site at Port of Leith, Scotland''s largest enclosed deepwater port.
The 250 kW demonstration project, which is supported by a £640,000 grant from U.K. government funder Innovate UK and is scheduled for completion by the end of April, is being built with a 15m high lattice tower, two 25-ton weights suspended by steel cables, and two grid-connected generator units.
"Our full scale projects will operate underground–but for this scale demonstrator, we''ve built an above-ground structure," said the company''s engineering project manager, Frances Tierney. “This two-month test program will confirm our modeling and give us valuable data for our first full scale, 4-8 MW project, which will commence later this year.”
The company said the lattice tower was built by English engineering firm ESL, based in Hull, and the base frame and weight baskets were made by AJS Fabrication, which is a steel fabrication company based in Fife, Scotland. The winches and control modules were provided by Huisman, a Dutch manufacturer of heavy lifting, drilling, pipe laying, and mooring systems. Glasgow-based Industrial Systems and Control (ISC) supported Gravitricity with controls and simulations.
A tower uses renewable energy to raise a mass in a 150-1,500m shaft and discharges the electricity thus ''stored'' by releasing the mass to rotate the two power generators. According to the company, the mass in similar facilities can range from 500 to 5,000 tons.
The technology is claimed to have a faster response time than lithium-ion storage technology and to be able to help stabilize electricity networks at 50Hz by responding to full power demand in less than a second. The demonstrator will be linked to the port''s electricity grid.
The system is also said to have a 25-year life cycle without loss of performance or cyclical degradation. The company said it can be, potentially, located anywhere, although disused mine shafts were indicated as ideal locations.
Gravity storage has begun to raise interest in the renewable energy industry in recent years. U.S. company Energy Vault unveiled, in 2019, gravity-based storage technology relying on a crane and 35-ton concrete blocks. Austrian research organization the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently suggested gravitational energy storage for low-energy-demand locations.
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