this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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We already have gravity batteries. This "block tower" type doesn't work in practice (no matter how many times they try it), because as they grow in size, they are subject to natural forces like wind, and that makes stacking the blocks safely a big challenge.
I'll be happy to eat my words if somebody can make this a viable solution, but this isn't a new concept, and this particular style has never worked so far.
They did test those block towers to see if they were resistant to earthquakes, and they were still standing after a test comparable to the strongest earthquake in California. Though I agree that compared to the other options available it does look way more unsafe and inefficient.
I do hope they get somewhere with this idea, because novel energy storage that's clean is always a good thing to pursue, but ever since I first saw this idea back in the mid-2010s, it's never materialized due to unforseen issues when it scales up to real-world use.