Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill has announced a new partnership with the Swiss energy storage company Energy Vault Holdings that will produce a series of prototype designs for deployable structures and vertical energy storage units up to 1,000 meters (3,280 feet).
Led by SOM Partners Adam Semel and Scott Duncan in collaboration with Burj Khalifa’s structural engineer Bill Baker, the initiative will be the first such technology to integrate gravity-based energy storage technology within the superstructure of tall buildings, enabling a carbon payback within accelerated 3–4 year timeframes.
SOM says: “The 10-year agreement is expected to result in multi-GWh of long duration Energy Vault GESS deployments to contribute to SADC region’s energy storage needs estimated to be 25 GW/125 GWh by 2035.”
3 Comments
It is what I thought it was:
In a gravity battery, a mass is displaced, or lifted, to generate gravitational potential energy that is transformed into electricity. Gravity batteries store gravitational potential energy by lifting a mass to a certain height using a pump, crane, or motor. After the mass is lifted, it now stores a certain gravitational potential energy based on the mass of the object and how high it was lifted. The stored gravitational potential energy is then transferred into electricity. The mass is lowered to fall back to its original height, which causes a generator to spin and create electricity.
An example, giving numbers:
EnergyVault is designing a LWS system using a tower built from 32-ton concrete blocks, stacked with 120-meter cranes. One commercial unit is expected to store 20 MWh of energy, or enough to power 2,000 Swiss homes a day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It doesn't, then, create extra energy but rather stores it (thus battery), saving it for peak use, and I assume there will be some loss.
Would it act as a damper in a tall building, countering sway? How does that change as the weights move up and down?
This would have to apply only to new tall building I presume. Existing buildings would be very difficult to retrofit to bear the extra weight load.
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