Energy Vault will license six additional EVx gravity energy storage systems in China just months after starting work on the world’s first GESS facility near Shanghai.
We’ve been doing it pretty much since the dawn of civilization.
With modern pumps and a modern understanding of physics and fluid dynamics, it’s not a huge problem to design a system for pumping water up a slope.
So many kilowatts of motor power gives you so many meters of head. Check valves and appropriately sized pumps can allow for the movement of huge amounts of water. And with hydro storage, you’re not really running the system at full bore the whole time anyway.
Water also happens to be fairly dense stuff while being a fluid, so it can store a lot of kinetic energy in pretty much any container you put it in.
Brick of concrete also store a lot of energy, but require a huge building whose sole purpose is to move bricks around. Whereas hydro also allows governments to store valuable drinking water and get electricity when they need it.
It’s really not though.
We’ve been doing it pretty much since the dawn of civilization.
With modern pumps and a modern understanding of physics and fluid dynamics, it’s not a huge problem to design a system for pumping water up a slope.
So many kilowatts of motor power gives you so many meters of head. Check valves and appropriately sized pumps can allow for the movement of huge amounts of water. And with hydro storage, you’re not really running the system at full bore the whole time anyway.
Water also happens to be fairly dense stuff while being a fluid, so it can store a lot of kinetic energy in pretty much any container you put it in.
Brick of concrete also store a lot of energy, but require a huge building whose sole purpose is to move bricks around. Whereas hydro also allows governments to store valuable drinking water and get electricity when they need it.
The real question isn’t “why not build pumped hydro” but “why not build pumped hydro in Shanghai.”
Look at an elevation map of Shanghai and the surrounding provinces: Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui. They’re not exactly “mountainous.”
Then make holes. Pump there.
At <25m above sea level?
https://www.zoompumps.com/article/the-power-of-the-pump-with-a-head-of-100-meters/
Hey you there! Stop acting like pumping water is some mystery alchemy yet to be phlebotomized out of the nether realm.