Green Gravity links with miner to fast track gravity energy storage tech – pv magazine International

July 3, 2023 David Carroll

From pv journal Australia

Inexperienced Gravity and Western Australia-based mining contractor RUC have agreed to collaborate on technical alternatives, information sharing and business preparations associated to gravitational vitality storage programs.

Inexperienced Gravity refers to the usage of gravity to generate clear, transportable vitality. Its know-how depends on lifting and reducing ultra-heavy weights into legacy mine shafts and in doing so, spin a turbine that generates electrical energy – basically offering another of pumped hydro or batteries with out the necessity for water or chemical substances.

Inexperienced Gravity Chief Government Officer Mark Swinnerton stated the corporate’s vitality storage know-how “represents a breakthrough within the quest for long-term financial financial savings in renewable vitality.”

“Inexperienced Gravity brings new know-how to an current inhabitants of mineshafts,” he stated. “By reusing mining belongings, prices may be saved low. By utilizing gravity as gas, we do not waste crucial water, soil, and chemical substances that others depend on. storage know-how.

Swinnerton stated the RUC partnership combines the contractor’s capabilities in mining shaft sinking and mineshaft hoisting operations with Inexperienced Gravity know-how, a mixture he believes “has the potential to enormously speed up and improve the deployment of gravitational vitality storage programs to mineshafts … Detailed design has begun for our business scale vitality storage system, combining international scale and RUC’s revolutionary pondering in areas equivalent to vertical transit programs and mine winder design produces the very best outcomes for know-how.

The signing of the deal follows Inexperienced Gravity’s current announcement that it’s going to companion with BlueScope to construct a 12-metre excessive prototype on the producer’s Port Kembla Steelworks. The analysis and improvement facility may also embrace a digital twin that can be utilized to check new elements or hypotheses earlier than testing them within the bodily world.

“[The] The lab will allow energy era capability and effectivity to be validated along with information that can assist Inexperienced Gravity know-how to connect with the facility grid on a big scale,” stated Swinnerton. “This permits us to have plenty of confidence within the mine space and to persuade the mining operators to say, ‘It is working right here’, and that is a solution to construct confidence.”