Dubious Energy Storage Concept

Can energy be stored by pushing heavy stuff uphill?  Of course.  That’s what pumped hydro is, which represents over 95% of the utility-scale energy storage current implemented on this planet.  It’s also what advanced rail energy storage (ARES) is, which represents 0%, as it never got off the ground, pardon the pun.

Now, can this all happen below ground, e.g., by digging a hole or using an existing one, like an abandoned mine?  Absolutely.  I’ve seen lots of plans for these over the years, though none has been implemented beyond the concept-on-paper to my knowledge.

That “hole” concept, using disused mines, is what an energy storage start-up called Gravitricity say they want to do.  I have two comments:

• If this somehow happens to be a feasible concept, there is no way to protect the IP.  You can’t tell the patent office that you want them to protect you against other people who want to drop and lift weights in pre-existing holes in the Earth.

• I also object to their nonscientific product description; “Energy Stored as Gravity.”  Gravity is the force that attracts two objects to one another. When an object moves a distance against a force, e.g. vertically upwards against the force of gravity, it gains potential energy that can be converted later into electrical energy. It’s hard, for me at least, to put credence into purported physicists who don’t understand high school science.

They say:

After receiving £750,000 in the first week of an October crowdfunding campaign (a claim I seriously doubt), Gravitricity, an industrious renewable energy storage system, is set to build their concept demonstrator in Scotland next year. Touted as the cheapest and one of the cleanest forms of energy storage in the global fast-responding energy market, Gravitricity technology stands to revolutionize clean-energy storage.

Sorry.  No it doesn’t.