Featured in The Long Game – 02-2023

Light weight

When it comes to gravity batteries, pumped-hydro storage is the gold standard, but its cost and topography-specific limitations are driving innovations ranging from freight-train braking to super-dense liquids. Blake Matich asks whether any of the new technologies can punch above their weight.

By

Blake Matich

08 Feb 2023

This successful 250 kW demonstrator project in Edinburgh featured a 15 m tower in which two 25-ton weights were tested for speed of response. | Photo: Gravitricity

The potential energy in the apocryphal 17th-century apple that hit Isaac Newton’s head helped generate his theory of gravitation. It wasn’t until the early 20th century, however, that the first major gravity-based battery was developed in Switzerland, a pumped-storage hydroelectricity system.A “gravity battery” stores the potential energy of a material or liquid using height and …

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