Energy Vault is a global energy storage company specializing in gravity and kinetic energy based, long-duration energy storage products. Energy Vault’s primary product is a gravity battery to store energy by stacking heavy blocks made of composite material into a structure, capturing potential energy in the elevation gain of the blocks. When demand for electricity is high, these blocks are lowered with the motors functioning as generators and delivering electricity to the grid.[1][2]
 | |
| Company type | Public company |
|---|---|
| NYSE: NRGV | |
| Industry | Energy Storage |
| Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Robert Piconi, Bill Gross, Andrea Pedretti |
| Headquarters | , |
Key people | Robert Piconi, CEO; Jan Kees van Gaalen, CFO; Marco Terruzzin, Chief Product Officer; Josh McMorrow, Chief Legal Officer |
| Products | Energy Storage |
| Website | energyvault.com |
History
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In 2017, Energy Vault was founded by the startup studio Idealab.[3]
In 2019, Energy Vault secured funding from Cemex[3] before going on to secure $110m of Series B funding to become the first energy storage investment of the SoftBank Vision Fund,[4][5] and won Fast Company's World Changing Idea Award for transformative utility-scale energy storage.
In 2020, Energy Vault was Named Technology Pioneer by World Economic Forum[6] and completed the mechanical construction of the first of its kind, grid-scale testing tower in Castione-Arbedo, Ticino, Switzerland.
In 2021, Energy Vault announced investments from Saudi Aramco Energy,[7] and other existing investors.
In February 2022, Energy Vault Holdings, Inc. began trading on the New York Stock Exchange following the business combination with Novus Capital Corporation II that raised approximately $235 million in gross proceeds additive to $107M and $50M license fees from Atlas Renewable.[8]
Testing tower operation and potential
editIn 2019 construction commenced of a testing tower for the case study EV1[9] in Castione-Arbedo, Ticino, Switzerland. It is about 70 m high and each of the 3 double cranes up to 66 m wide. The blocks made of cement with fly ash have a mass of 35 tonnes each. In December 2020 single blocks were raised and lowered 42 m over about 1 minute at 0.7 m/s and the energy drawn from and returned to the national grid recorded. 4.124 kWh electricity was needed to achieve the maximum theoretical potential energy of 3.906 kWh at this height, giving ~95% efficiency for this. On lowering a production of 3.106 kWh was recorded, giving a mean production power of ~186 kW and an efficiency of ~79.5% for this, giving a total round-trip efficiency of ~75%.[10]
A photograph shows about 28 blocks available at the lowest level.[11] With the blocks each weighing ~340 kN and measuring assumed 5 m in height, a potential energy of 340 kN x 5 m = 1.7 MNm = ~0.47 kWh can be stored for each block raised one level.[2] The January 2022 photograph on this page shows 8 blocks standing on the second level, 4 on the third level, and 2 on the fourth and final level. They are thus totally storing 1.7 MNm x (8 + (2 x 4) + (3 X 2)) = 37.4 MN = ~10.4 kWh.
The dimensions of the tower allow stacking at least 8 layers. The base layer stores no energy. If the active 7 layers above have 28 blocks each, with each layer weighing ~9.5 MN, and each block can each be lowered to the ground outside the original base layer, the second layer can be lowered one level assumed 5 m, the third 10 m, the fourth 15 m, and so on. This gives a sum of 140 m x 9.5 MN = 1330 MNm = ~370 kWh. With 9 layers it would be 476 kWh.
The stacking method actually envisioned for EV1 shows outside circular layers concentric to the inner one with roughly twice its diameter.[9] This is built up to a height about one third of the inner one. The maximum height difference of the total centers of gravity of the two stacks is then one third of the maximum height. In the testing tower this would be 14 m. The maximum energy storable would then be 7 x 9.5 MN x 14 m = ~931 MNm = ~259 kWh. This is under 1% of the 35 MWh goal for EV1.[10]
The full size EV1 would have 7000 blocks of 35 t.[2] Drawings show 36 layers with 200 blocks each, totaling 7000 t for the inner stack. The bottom 14 layers are not actively usable.[9] The upper 22 layers with a total mass of 154 kt weighing ~1510 MN are moveable and assuming 5 m high blocks have their center of gravity at 125 m height. When they are all lowered and displaced to form an outer ring, their center of gravity is then at 35 m. Therefore the average drop is 90 m and the maximum energy storable 1.51 GN x 90 m = 136 GNm = 37.8 MWh without counting friction and conversion losses.
References
edit- ^ Glover, J. Duncan (2022). Power System Analysis and Design. Cengage Learning. pp. 444–446. ISBN 9780357676394.
In action, Energy Vault's towers are constantly stacking and unstacking 35-metric-ton bricks arrayed in concentric rings. Bricks in an inner ring, for example, might be stacked up to store 35 megawatthours of energy.
- ^ a b c Reynolds, Matt (4 January 2022). "Gravity Could Solve Clean Energy's One Major Drawback". Wired. Retrieved 23 April 2022.
an unusual multi-armed crane lifts two 35-ton concrete blocks high into the air. The blocks delicately inch their way up the blue steel frame of the crane, where they hang suspended from either side of a 66-meter-wide horizontal arm. There are three arms in total, each one housing the cables, winches, and grabbing hooks needed to hoist another pair of blocks into the sky, giving the apparatus the appearance of a giant metallic insect lifting and stacking bricks with steel webs. Although the tower is 75 meters tall...
- ^ a b "Energy Vault Announces Commercial Availability of Transformative Utility-Scale Energy Storage Technology Yielding Unprecedented Economic Benefits to Global Energy Providers". www.energyvault.com. Retrieved 2021-09-20.
- ^ Rathi, Akshat. "SoftBank's first bet in energy storage is a startup that stacks concrete blocks". Quartz. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
- ^ Hook, Leslie (15 August 2019). "SoftBank to invest $110m in brick tower energy storage start-up". Financial Times. Nikkei. Retrieved 26 August 2019.
- ^ Burke, Elaine (18 February 2021). "10 start-ups powering the future of energy". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 23 April 2022.
- ^ "Saudi Aramco bets on Energy Vault's block-stacking energy storage". Canary Media. Retrieved 2023-04-05.
- ^ "Energy Vault Holdings, Inc. Begins Trading on the New York Stock Exchange" (PDF). Energy Vault. 2 April 2022. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
- ^ a b c Fyke, Aaron (March 20, 2019). "The Fall and Rise of Gravity Storage Technologies". Future Energy. 3 (3): P625-630.
- ^ a b "Energy Vault Management Presentation" (PDF). Energy Vault. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 June 2023. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
- ^ ""Energy Vault Commercial Demonstration Unit, Arbedo-Castione"". Retrieved 4 July 2024.
