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Gravity Storage 101 Or Why Pumped Hydro Is The Only Remotely Real Gravity Storage
(cleantechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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There is only one other gravity storage system that I know of that isn't hydro, but it isn't really a storage system. It is the Forterra ropeway used by a quarry in the UK where buckets of minerals are sent down a rope line similar to a ski lift. Since the quarry is uphill from the processing area, the energy from the material traveling along the rope is used to pull up all the empty buckets. Tom Scott did a YouTube video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiYXI1Tfu4
I don't know why they didn't just put the mineral processing area closer to the quarry, maybe the quarry moved over time?
But anyway this is the only example of a viable gravity powered energy system that I know of that is not pumped hydro.
That's pretty neat! But it seems to me it's not storage because they're not putting energy in to get out later. It's more like mining naturally-occurring potential energy from the Earth's crust. Probably that potential energy formed millions of years ago when tectonic plate activity pushed the rock up to its present elevation. So - it's geothermal energy with extra steps.