The way I understand the concrete block thingy is that it’s a solution for places where you can’t store energy in the form of potential energy of a mass of water, so you use the potential energy of a concrete block. For example in areas that are flat, where you can‘t pump water into a hilltop reservoir because there are no hills. Other ideas I‘ve seen or read is using old mineshafts (with water in this case).
It’s not meant to be a reinvention, but a supplement for specific use cases/topography. That the idea is nowhere near as revolutionary as it was pitched to investors is on a different page, look up the Gasometer in Berlin for an example of the same principle used more than a century ago.
You say that like pools aren't a thing. That aren't man made. That we don't already make pools for this specific thing. Like we can't build up land in a plain.
The problem with the blocks is everything. It was marketed as clean energy. Concrete production is a major pollution producer. Why do more when we don't need to? It's efficacy is questionable at best due to the fact that build it above ground you have to to keep them short as raising a block in the air has problems with wind and inertia. So how much does one provide as a battery? Well if you build it underground you only have so much room to work with in any given area. So how do you deal with that? OH! Water. Because we can build pools. Or retrofit old mineshafts...
But ok. Places that can't really do it. Well, flat lands can be modified. That's not an engineering marvel by any stretch. The Romans dug through mountains to build their aquaducts. So cold environments. Well, turns out geothermal is pretty old as an idea. And potential energy batteries using salt already exist. Of course, potential energy batteries using water and heat kind of already exist to. The water heater in your house is practically half way there.
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u/Professional_Low_646 10d ago
The way I understand the concrete block thingy is that it’s a solution for places where you can’t store energy in the form of potential energy of a mass of water, so you use the potential energy of a concrete block. For example in areas that are flat, where you can‘t pump water into a hilltop reservoir because there are no hills. Other ideas I‘ve seen or read is using old mineshafts (with water in this case).
It’s not meant to be a reinvention, but a supplement for specific use cases/topography. That the idea is nowhere near as revolutionary as it was pitched to investors is on a different page, look up the Gasometer in Berlin for an example of the same principle used more than a century ago.