Is this how we solve the problem with renewable energy?
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48 Comments
I immediately thought of the tens of thousands of abandoned opal mineshafts in South Australia. That same state already has the cleanest energy, so I wonder if it would be viable to store energy down those holes.
First look at the Vault, and it seems weird they'd choose to move the weights horizontally to store them. It's just more energy loss both ways.
They should be stored on a incline so as to reclaim energy when moving into use.
Or better yet, a stack them so that the motor/generator moves one at a time like an abacus.
Interesting concept, but seems a bit Rube Goldberg to me.
You would be better off using that steel and concrete to build a reservoir on top of a hill and pump water
12 hour days + 12 hour nights
I love it
Nuclear.
This video lacked the criticism an idea like this deserves. Looks to be a more expensive and less efficient energy storage solution than just building a facility for pumped hydro.
Yeah that structure isn't going to be able to meet large scale energy needs, same as pumped hydro or mineshafts as they're very niche in where you can build them.
I've seen something about superheating bricks that looks promising. Also using compression with ammonia.
You have to think – what are ways to store energy?
1) Chemical
2) Heat
3) Gravity
Any others?
Flow batteries use just iron, water and salt
Molten salt from CSP stores a lot of heat
Bricks can be heated to 3000c – Rondo Energy
Anhydrous ammonia batteries work like refrigerants except in reverse
Apart from these things i think we're looking for technological breakthroughs in physics
I don't think gravity is the way to go
Awesome!
I heard there is a liquid battery solution that is done in shipping containers that is a waaaaaaaay better solution
The energy vault guy REALLY glossed over the “composite blocks” which, if made locally every time are almost certainly “concrete”
I suspect that’s why he also glossed over the environmental impact of concrete vs steel
How many percentage of energy loss from the energy gained from RE into the process of pumping the water of lifting the weight to produce the potential energy ? im curious
The major problem with this video is the guy talking about the vaults says it’s at night that they’d be using the excess power to store energy because consumption is down, while at the beginning of the video they are saying night is when the extra stored energy is needed.
Gravity energy sounds like such a bad idea. Every time you change energy's form you lose more energy . Entropy at its finest.
Hopefully that future energy mix includes nuclear
I'm sorry but all gravity storages other than pumped Hydro are completely bonkers. The amount of energy they hold vs. the cost is not competitive not even to batteries. Also there's way more maintenenace needed than for batteries. Using concrete for it makes it even more stupid as concrete production emits more greenhouse gases than aviation globally.
This is obsolete information.
Eg
FYI 100x more Colbolt is used removing sulphur from fossil fuels to put in your ICE cars. So saying oh no the DIRTY mining required to produce batteries is 100% MISSLEADING
Other than batteries, do Capacitors have a future in this regard? Or are they not viable in terms of construction costs? I thought they could store a lot of electrical energy but would have to discharge it all at once? If i am wrong, any info regarding the workings of a capacitor are welcome
This video feels like an advert for companies making worse (less efficient, more resource-intensive) alternatives to pumped hydro, more than anything else. We in the UK also have a seemingly endless supply of sites for pumped hydro in the form of the Scottish highlands: plenty of glacial valleys that are uninhabited, not used for agriculture, and easily dammed for huge storage/release potential. Unbecoming of usually excellent B1M/TB content. You mention the criticisms briefly and let that CEO speak for quite some time.
And you lost a subscriber at that gravity storage BS. See ya!
The inefficiencies of moving the bocks horizontal mixed with the fact that it's not that high makes this a huge waste of resources.
Amazing, how great this 80's porn actor plays the scientist from Energy Vault. That guy has talent!
And nuclear ☢️
Love these prototypes but… You know that for your base-load you can build NOW nuclear power plants? Which are the cleanest way to produce energy
WHAT….no more Fred!!! Arrraahhhhhh 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂❤❤
You do know oil/fossil fuels will still be used to make your lithium batteries and factories making solar panels. Explain that? You can't completely get rid of fossil fuels, when China, Russia even Saudi Arabia aren't giving their fossil fuels. So, stop thinking this will change the climate for the the better. I am more worried about digging up minerals from third world countries so that first world countries can use their phones complaining about changing of the climate.
Everything is so beautiful when reality isn't important
Is this actually the best way? Seems pretty… intense.
this is why nuclear energy is needed
Most of the storage “solutions” are absolutely horrible for the environment. That has to be part of the equation.
Nuclear…GeoThermal….
Either way, we're screwed. We're not stopping climate change. We've failed. We won't prevent the planet's temperature going above 1.5 degrees – NO chance.
Couple of things. First, a traditional base load (coal, nuclear) grid has the SAME problem, just from a different perspective. That’s because demand varies over the day, but those big, stable power plants have a hard time varying output quickly. So it needs what is called “dispatchable power” too… power that can be quickly turned on and off to match demand. Traditionally, this was done with natural gas “peaker plants”, which are expensive to operate. A renewable grid needs dispatchable power too – and peaker plants work in a pinch, just like batteries could work with base load plants. The problem is matching demand, not providing a steady output.
Second, it takes a LOT less battery than you might think. While short term intermittency is unpredictable – we don’t know how much wind there will be this afternoon – long-term variability is HIGHLY predictable. We know exactly when the sun rises and sets, every day. We know the range of wind speeds at a site, with seasonal variations. We know about how many cloudy days there will be in a year. So the annual output of a site is predictable, and the maximum and minimum outputs are predictable, and “normal” variation is predictable. Provide enough storage for normal variability, and fill in the rest with peaker plants or grid power from elsewhere. Like, we know the sun sets, and rises. Build enough storage for your solar site to run the city overnight. You know you’re unlikely to have more than three straight days of cloudy weather? Add enough to handle three days of clouds. You don’t NEED to do “OMG WHAT IF THERE’S A SOLAR ECLIPSE THAT LASTS FOR SIX MONTHS?????” And use green hydrogen in those peaker plants, and you have a 100% renewable solution that can handle normal and even abnormal variability (unless of course, the Sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing across the entire planet for years…)
Make a video on quantum generator patent..
I'm no scientist but this makes no sense to me. How is this any different than perpetual motion. If dropping weights produced more energy than needed to lift the weight then you can feed some energy back to lift the weight again and you would have perpetual motion. Which is BS so this makes no sense to me.
Wait, the weights only go straight up and down, & inside of a weather safe building, instead of by a bunch of cranes, outside, building a weird cement block tower? Doesn't sound complicated enough.
It would be nice to hear what their cost per kWh is. Gravity storage tends not to do super well on paper.
OMG
Just use nuclear!!!
Green power is not made by using green power and both solar and wind have a 10yr life and can't be recycled SO WHAT IS GREEN see RDP Marine Australia THATS Green technology.
TB, and B1M, good at flashy videos but not so much at critical thinking. 😅
1kWh = lifting 360t 1m higher. So it involves too much movement if I wanted to use my house as a weight.
The problem with the “build nothing but renewables and attack anything else” is that the storage technology to actually make it work beyond cherry picked hours flat out does not exist. And once it does exist, it still only accounts for fuel (wind/sun) *transients*, not steady state interruptions. Any weather patterns that disrupt generation for more than a few hours are going to lead to voltage collapse and complete blackouts. As a NERC certified reliability coordinator that literally controlled the power grid, I can inform the “renewables are all we need” crowd that a complete blackout takes weeks to recover from. If you try to have a 100% renewable grid, you’re going to regularly be without power to huge sections of the country for weeks at a time.
You must have a backbone of generation that operates independent of weather. It’s not an option, it’s a necessity – even when storage technology can make short term operation feasible. The solution is nuclear power. Replace the fossil fuel plants with nuclear, and keep about a 49/49 mix of nuclear and renewable (with a little left over fossils for black start recovery; you’re permanently down otherwise). That’s the solution; not delusions of millions of wind turbines and solar farms powering everything.
Why not just install turbines to the existing water network with an upgrade and you can generate electricity all the way to your house by running the tap due to water pressure…
Or you could go nuclear and wouldn't need any of this crap.
People keep commenting nuclear but nuclear has a big problem, it doesn't support a degrowth, anti-capitalist agenda.
That seems insanely inefficient. Each weight isn’t going to move far, and you have thousands of them, so that’s all those conversion losses multiplied across thousands of weights.
Well, great idea, looks very technical. Good luck with the maintenance costs.
Shouldn’t we demand less and use the days of energy in the year more wisely.
Learn, socialise, train or play as a form of grounding for what we are , compared to who we are.
P.s. which deep down we all use the internet for… to show/look at who we are… at an individual level, funny that this manifested on a online network.
One looks out and sees the billions of other people and forms of life, while all that one worries about is; who am I?