Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Energy Vault: MEGA-BUSTED!" video.

  1.  @markusschellenberg4684  It stuns me nobody is pointing to that obvious point. Whatever the motor is, that's what defines the rate it can soak up power and also the limit it can deliver power. With pumped hydro you can have a small pump or collection of pumps it does not have to be the same size as the turbine. Personally I think the grid scale tech that's about to take off is hydrogen. We know how to generate it from water. We know how to pump gas down a pipe. Companies like Rolls Royce solved all the issues with hydrogen fuelled turbines years ago. The only reason its not taken off is because there hasn't been a market. Guess what there now is a market and NONE of the battery technology can deliver sustained gigawatt delivery. The batteries are awesome for short term power smoothing, because they can react so fast, but they suck for sustained delivery because they just can't hold enough. We built what was the biggest battery in the world near Adelaide. But if Adelaide's main power station completely tripped out that battery can supply that demand for maybe 2 hours. I once heard that if all the power went off in California they have about 27minutes of battery time. Hydrogen can do days. Pumped hydro can also do days but that's provided you have the right geography. Plus you can build hydrogen power stations on existing sites because the grid connection already exists.
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  2. There's actually a very simple way to look at this. Consider the size of the electric motors in the cranes. I do control systems and automation and they don't look much over 100kW. Even if they 200 or 250kW during discharge they are only discharging 50% of the time (at best) because they have to go up and get the next block. So even if you use really big motors your going to struggle to get anything more than a few hundred kilowatts out of this thing on discharge. How does that work with a solar farm of wind farm producing megawatts let alone on a grid where things are measured in gigawatts?
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  3. There's actually a very simple way to look at this. Consider the size of the electric motors in the cranes. I do control systems and automation and they don't look much over 100kW. Even if they 200 or 250kW during discharge they are only discharging 50% of the time (at best) because they have to go up and get the next block. So even if you use really big motors your going to struggle to get anything more than a few hundred kilowatts out of this thing on discharge. How does that work with a solar farm of wind farm producing megawatts let alone on a grid where things are measured in gigawatts?
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