As the world grapples with transitioning away from fossil fuels, engineers are hard at work to integrate new types of generation into the power grid. There’s plenty of challenges, particularly around the intermittent nature of many renewable energy sources. Energy storage projects are key to keeping the lights on round the clock, even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Conventional grid-level energy storage has long made use of pumped hydro installations where water is pumped uphill to a storage reservoir where it can later be used to run a generator. More recently, batteries are being used to do the job. When you consider the cost of these installations and their storage capacities, there is a gap between batteries and pumped hydro. A recently published whitepaper proposes Mountain Gravity Energy Storage — gravity-based energy storage using sand or gravel in mountainous areas — is the technology that can bridge the gap.
They’re Storing Energy On Mountains Now
A diagram of an representative example installation in Molokai Island, Hawaii.
The concept of Mountain Gravity Energy Storage, or MGES, involves storing excess energy from the grid by raising sand or gravel to a higher elevation. This is achieved using a pair of cranes, which load the material into storage containers, before pulling them up to height on a cable. The material can then be held in storage at higher elevation until power is requested by the grid. At this stage, the material can be reloaded into storage containers, and lowered to the bottom storage site, with gravity doing the work to pull the weight back down, turning a generator in the process. Interestingly, the same electric mot ..
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