Energy Vault Holdings, together with its partners Atlas Renewable and China Eagle, announced that the world's first grid scale gravity energy storage system has entered the first phase of debugging. The EVx system is adjacent to a wind power facility near Shanghai and is expected to achieve full grid connection in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Energy Vault has adopted a new method of energy storage. Its solution is based on the fundamental principles of gravity and potential energy. The EVx platform utilizes the mechanical process of lifting and lowering composite blocks to store and distribute electricity.

The company built a structure composed of hollow towers. This facility utilizes excess solar energy in the system to pull weight and generate potential energy. When needed, the block is lowered and the electric motor generates electricity. This technology is not much different from pumped storage hydropower.

Composite blocks can be manufactured cheaply

Through its waste management subsidiary, China Tianying Group can purchase low-cost materials such as mining tailings and coal ash. Energy Vault, which listed on the New York Stock Exchange in February this year, stated that these blocks can also be made from soil from the construction site of the gravity energy storage system itself, or, for example, fiberglass from retired wind turbine blades.

Energy Vault is developing long-term gravity energy storage technology

The tower is controlled by a computer system and machine vision software, which can coordinate charging and discharging cycles. The new battery storage can operate at full power of 25 MW for up to four hours - with a capacity of 100 MWh. The company expects to increase the efficiency of its EVx system to over 80%.

Energy Vault engineers claim that in their next efforts, they can reach a scale of 12 hours and gigawatt hours. In addition, the company expects efficiency to exceed 80%. This means that it will be able to recover four fifths of its electricity consumption. In this situation, the company's technology will compete with other long-term energy storage solutions such as pumped storage hydropower stations, compressed air, and liquid flow batteries. The demonstration project installed in Switzerland in 2020 achieved 75% efficiency.

Expanding the size of China's investment portfolio by 20 times

Investors expect that the EVx system located in Rudong City, Jiangsu Province, near Shanghai, will be fully connected to the grid in the fourth quarter. Adjacent to wind power plants and transmission lines. Energy Vault, headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, revealed in September 2023 that it will establish five more EVx gravity energy storage systems in China, with a total capacity of 2GWh. Its partners are Atlas Renewable, one of the company's stakeholders, as well as the Chinese non-governmental organization EIPC and China Tianying, which focuses on telecommunications as its core business.Editor/XingWentao