Rendering via Energy Vault
By Amy Gunia | CNN
Humans have long built towering structures to showcase the power of empires, rulers, religions and corporations. Today, more tall buildingsare popping up than ever before. But skyscrapers could soon have a new purpose: storing renewable energy.
One of the biggest hurdles to a power grid dominated by clean energy is the intermittency of some renewable sources. Sometimes clouds roll in when solar energy is needed, or the wind stops blowing, and turbines can’t generate power. Other times, the sun and wind produce more electricity than is required.
Storage is crucial for balancing generation and consumption. A combination of technologies — from various forms of batteries to other energy storage methods — will likely be necessary to increase capacity.
Enter battery skyscrapers. At the end of May, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the architecture and engineering firm behind some of the world’s tallest buildings, announced a partnership with the energy storage company Energy Vault to develop new gravity energy storage solutions.
That includes a design for a skyscraper that would use a motor powered by electricity from the grid to elevate giant blocks when energy demand is low. These blocks would store the electricity as “potential” energy. When there is demand, the blockswould be lowered, releasing the energy, which would be converted into electricity.
