Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
independent.co.uk
Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
1–10 of 118 posts
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#2I admit in the past I've been skeptical about the use of gravity batteries when they involved things like towers and stacking large weights as their energy density is relatively quite low, but this seems like it makes a ton of sense. That is:
1. The shaft is already dug, so no need to build a tower.
2. As the article points out, many/most of these sites are already well-connected to the grid.
3. Also as pointed out in the article, this could be a boon to depressed areas and help broaden economic value generation.
Am I missing something?
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#3This must be orders of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro and I would expect more expensive than lithium batteries. And unless the mine is close to an existing high voltage substation then there will be significant costs hooking it up to the grid. The pilot will be a 2MW generator but you can fit a 2MW inverter and a 2MWh battery into a single shipping container so the scale is really minimal.
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#4It will be interesting to see how much net energy is able to be stored after the energy cost of de-watering the mine is taken into account.
(An interesting tidbit of trivia I learned from miners is that deep underground mines only became feasible after reliable pumping was put in place.[1] Prior to that, they flooded out from groundwater intrusion.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooded_mine
Edited to add the wikipedia link.
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#5This must be orders of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro and I would expect more expensive than lithium batteries. And unless the mine is close to an existing high voltage substation then there will be significant costs hooking it up to the grid. The pilot will be a 2MW generator but you can fit a 2MW inverter and a 2MWh battery into a single shipping container so the scale is really minimal.
> The IIASA analysts noted that mines already have the basic infrastructure for such an endeavour, while also being connected to the power grid. “This significantly reduces the cost and facilities for the implementation of Underground Gravity Energy Storage (UGES) plants,” the study noted.
Not that your wholly unsupported naysaying isn't compelling.
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#6This must be orders of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro and I would expect more expensive than lithium batteries. And unless the mine is close to an existing high voltage substation then there will be significant costs hooking it up to the grid. The pilot will be a 2MW generator but you can fit a 2MW inverter and a 2MWh battery into a single shipping container so the scale is really minimal.
Mines are heavy industrial electrical consumers already, so generally have strong grid ties.
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#7This must be orders of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro and I would expect more expensive than lithium batteries. And unless the mine is close to an existing high voltage substation then there will be significant costs hooking it up to the grid. The pilot will be a 2MW generator but you can fit a 2MW inverter and a 2MWh battery into a single shipping container so the scale is really minimal.
> The IIASA analysts noted that mines already have the basic infrastructure for such an endeavour, while also being connected to the power grid. “This significantly reduces the cost and facilities for the implementation of Underground Gravity Energy Storage (UGES) plants,” the study noted. Not that your wholly unsupported naysaying isn't compelling.
Connected to the grid yes but usually the interconnect is simply enough for running the mine not enough to cover many megawatts of storage capability. The battery storage companies have found that there is an abundance of fields and brownfield sites close to existing substations to place their batteries where the cost of connecting to the grid is minimal.
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#8The phrase "2 MW of energy" makes no sense based on units. Shouldn't writers (and editors) be required to at least take high school physics or chemistry?
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#9This must be orders of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro and I would expect more expensive than lithium batteries. And unless the mine is close to an existing high voltage substation then there will be significant costs hooking it up to the grid. The pilot will be a 2MW generator but you can fit a 2MW inverter and a 2MWh battery into a single shipping container so the scale is really minimal.
Mines are heavy industrial electrical consumers already, so generally have strong grid ties.
Yeah, I'd be surprised if mines weren't in the multi MW range... but nothing like a modern hyperscale data center. Those damn things are 100MW and larger!
Re: Europe's deepest mine to become giant gravity battery
#10This must be orders of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro and I would expect more expensive than lithium batteries. And unless the mine is close to an existing high voltage substation then there will be significant costs hooking it up to the grid. The pilot will be a 2MW generator but you can fit a 2MW inverter and a 2MWh battery into a single shipping container so the scale is really minimal.
You might be surprised how few sites are suitable for pumped hydro and how costly it is to build. I can easily see this being both cheaper and more efficient. Most pumped hydro installations outside of northern Europe end up requiring large dams to create a big enough impoundment uphill. A direct weight solution should have better conversion efficiency as well, Gravitricity quotes 80% which is on the high end of pumped hydro. The charge/discharge rate and response time also look better than a similar pumped hydro setup, unsurprisingly considering the lower inertia.
It so happens that pumped hydro was considered for the same site but abandoned last year due to the high cost estimate.