I’ve been following the progress of the Energy Vault idea for some years, and I’ve always been skeptical that siting would ever be practical for this idea.
But with some tweaking and updating, there might be a case.
Earlier iterations had the kind of look only an engineer could appreciate.
MeH!
I keep liking that because it feels cool, I keep thinking of how many moving parts shifting large weights for a very long time. Worth a try, I figure, if someone pays for it.
Just Have A Think covered these folks and their Scottish competitor a few years ago, he seemed to favor the Scots, looking for a bigger, simpler, underground weight system in abandoned mines, but the advantage of a tower is you can build one places you won’t find massive vertical shafts. But building one 1 kilometer high? Why so many eggs in such a costly basket.
But SOM also did interesting work on the wooden skyscraper concept – designing to match a 42-story apartment building they designed in the 1960s, but replacing concrete with engineered timber. The building they wanted to mimic isn’t too far away from the Hancock building, in fact. I’d love to see some timber construction at scale get going here.
https://www.som.com/research/timber-tower-research/
But for long-term energy storage, the more the merrier as we work out functioning designs. Form Energy seems to be hanging in there with the iron-air battery design.
“Form’s first 100-hour batteries are hitting the grid
It’s been a challenging road. But now, the company is looking to quickly scale manufacturing to meet AI-fueled demand.”
https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/forms-first-100-hour-batteries-are-hitting-the-grid/