Holy market capitalisation Batman! I had no idea they were a listed company. I thought they'd just wither away and die a quick death. Now this boondoggle is going to drag on for years!
You look at a company like Gravity Vault and thinks, "Maaaan, I'm goona make millions shorting this thing, let's buy some puts asap!!!" And then you remember that the same dumbos that made it's valuation go to 2 billion dollars will probably pour even more money into this dumpster fire. Being dumb doesn't necessarily mean losing it all, just like being right doesn't translate into making bank in the market. The world surely ain't fair is it?
How to know if a science or technology product is a scam: 1. Cello or Violin music plays 2. Deep voice narrator 3. "It's gonna change the world" or "it will revolutionise everything you know", big lofty claims about society at large and "humanity moving forward" without any actual explanation of the product and how it works 4. Stock footage of plants growing, or children playing, or cityscapes. 5. Lots of CGI
Even if you ignore his concerns: - crane structure uses lots of steel - you need a ton of concrete blocks Both of which require substantial amounts of energy to produce and are among the highest polluting industries.
I think, sir, you will find that you actually need _multiple_ tons of concrete blocks! ...because they weight more than one ton each. It's a joke about how the word 'ton' is used in weird ways in English.
Unlike a reservoir storage, which is build with heavy construction equipment and made from concrete. The thing is just how incredibly inefficient this method of storage is, compared to just pumping water uphill. One way or the other concrete and steel will be involved, but at least the water doesn't need to be replaced in reservoir storage. Well, unless you suddenly get much less precipitation, due to a shift in climate.
I had an idea in my mid 20s (about 12 years ago) that I called "Gravity Wells." I got all excited about it, and wrote up a design. After a little writing, I was far less excited because the hole I'd have to dig would have to be massive, making it impractical. So I switched the design to be above ground, but there were so many safety concerns and confounding factors that I was losing all excitement over the idea (all this over the course of about 48 hours). Then I had an epiphany, I could use water! Oh yes, that would be far easier... but I'd still need a water tower. Wait, what if I just used a pond and a hill... at which point I realized I'd been an idiot and re-invented hydraulic power, but dumber. I never would have thought that grown-ass people would invest a bunch of money making a proof of concept for an idea I'd had and discarded as a total failure in my mid-20s. I still have a notebook of a ton of rubbish ideas I discarded, just in case there are people who want to waste a ton of money on a fool's errand ;)
You having this "stupid" idea, might make you an idiot. You getting to the right conclusion, and the best solution to date, in a few hours, makes you not an idiot at all. It shows that your reasoning is pretty sound.
@@xmtxx Why are you putting quotes around stupid, it's your word not his? And I would beg to disagree; having a stupid idea does not make anybody an idiot. We're human, we're allowed to have stupid ideas without automatically being designated idiots
Here in Switzerland, where Energy Vault is situated, we have a particular high knowledge of pumpstorage optimisation. Our pumpstorage lakes in the alps typically contain tens to hundreds of millions of cubic meters and will exploit a hight difference of 500 to 1'500 m, thus storing the same amount of energy as tens of millions (!) of 20 tons concrete blocs. I am happy to see that none of the major Swiss power companies or any of its leading employees support this project.
I actually live very close to where they built their funny little crane in Switzerland. Here are some relevant observations: 1. Since that crane was built, I never actually saw this thing move, and I go by it several times a week during different hours of the day. 2. It is built in the region where the valleys are quite steep (1000-2000 meters above valley floor) and also quite narrow This implicates: a) Building a water-based energy storage is quite easy and efficient and there are a bunch of them here already b) Caused by the mountains, we always have a strong wind system in the valleys here, often exceeding 40 km/h in spring and summer caused by thermal activity in the mountains when the sun shines. And even when this wind system is not on (e.g. on a cloudy day), the valley where EV crane is built is susceptible to normal meteo wind blowing from the north or south, because the valley is north-south oriented. My point is, I just wanted to underline thunderf00t's point that they literally built their prototype in the worst possible spot. Thanks for your god work Phil, keep it up!
would have been much better if they built it on top of the mountain & had the bricks travel down a rail or something getting the power that way..... then you could use the vally for all the other energy creation you have mentioned.
The fact they did build it and your report in addition give me the impression they thought it would be helpful to invest some money to get some more. Theranos even took it a step further and degraded honest scientists to stage actors to keep the show running.
I wonder, maybe they did choose this spot for a reason. Its such a bad spot, that everybody can see it and they might just state, that concept is correct. Just the spot was not optimal, sorry for that. And the scam can continue for few more years.
I think you are a bit unfair here, Thunderfoot. "This can power a kettle for an hour." No one does that. You run the kettle 2-3 min to have hot water. Which means, you can run 10-15 kettles with the device. And on average, you can do 2 cups of tea with a kettle. So you en up with like 30 cups of tea. So, there is enough energy in this to make a well deserved hot tea for the whole energyvault team after a hard day of work in those cold mountains. Well worth it and satisfying.
Honestly this is one of my favourite channels. As someone in STEM I know how easy it is to get caught up in futuristic dreams. Thunderfoot is the guy who knocks you back down to reality, every single time.
Never got caught up in futuristic dream, tell me, how do people do it? You can literally debunk any of these with highschool physics, I never went to university nor explored physics beyond highschool, and there's literally nothing about any of things Thunderf00t debunked so far that I couldn't calculate myself.
@@kirayoshikage4057 "You can literally debunk any of these with highschool physics, I never went to university nor explored physics beyond highschool, and there's literally nothing about any of things Thunderf00t debunked so far that I couldn't calculate myself."-- Which shows you just how ignorant most of the people on social media are that cheer these ideas and denounce those that prove them to be bullshit.
There needs to be a balance. To be honest it’s way easier to knock down dreamers than to try. So while I like him dunking on actual scams it’s pretty toxic to hold every idea to such standards. We need people who believe better things are possible and try making them a reality, and often failing but sometimes succeeding. Just as much as we need thunder foot to stop 2 billion dollar scams.
@@astronemir Oh, it is toxic to hold every idea to such standards? What standards exactly? Not breaking laws of thermodynamics in your pipe dream is now apparently too much of a standard for you and you cannot cope with reality you live in? Sounds like you need a professional to talk to and not someone to lower their standards from the bottom of the barrel all the way down to the cold solid bedrock.
10:13 Fun fact: This thing is just 9 miles away from the Contra dam (the one from Goldeneye), which holds about 100'000'000 metric tons of water and generates about 230 GWh annually.
At first Sean Bean wanted to build a giant crane to drop a metric sh*t ton of concrete bricks on London, but then he consulted with his science staff and they went with the satellite idea instead. This company is just using his abandoned test base.
Not to mention how prevalent hydroelectric power is in the Alps. Where Switzerland is located. Maybe in the flat regions of Europe, like northern Germany or the Netherlands I would at least understand this brain fart. It would still be stupid, but at least you can't have reservoir storage as easily there.
Dividella? Used to operate one of those. Finicky as hell. Suction cups to lift vials of injectable medicine and put them in cardboard boxes. Lotta smashed glass, and that's also just a few centimeters of movement. Neat to watch them work, though. It's a good job when every day feels like you're in an episode of How It's Made, even if it's a re-run.
The concrete storage rack idea is going to have a lot of energy loss due to friction and has lots of points of failure and wear and tear on the concrete handling systems. Lots of places that will need to be lubricated.
What is worse is the grand scheme skyscraper idea is totally unmaintainable, if not outright inoperable. Inspecting it, repairing it, and upkeeping it are going to be nightmares. And a single failure is unlikely to have a constrained/confined effect, because there is an extremely strong financial incentive against a resilient structure: the whole thing must be designed to facilitate rapid transport, which is the antithesis of safety.
@@Graknorke Concrete produces up to 90% of its weight in CO2. So each of those 10 tonne blocks could require 9 tonnes of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere. Water, on the other hand, literally falls out of the sky and its 'production' has zero carbon emissions.
@@chrischandler4151 how do you think you're going to build the dams to pump water up to? going to be concrete. the vault building is still questionable but the concrete is the least questionable part of it
15:40 - the first several rows of concrete blocks are "fake" - their crane system uses a hoist which attaches to two holes cast into the block - the yellow apparatus. If you look at the rest of the blocks stacked around the crane - there are no holes on top... Which means they cannot be lifted into place by this crane lol!
ahahah! I love watching these kind of "investment opportunities" go broke. The new google keywords are: _energy vault fraud_ SERP preview: LAS VEGAS, May 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- 1791 Management ("1791") filed a Securities Fraud and Market Manipulation Lawsuit against Energy Vault Inc (NRGV). The action charges Energy Vault with intentional violations of securities laws and fraud, including deliberate fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions relating to the company's business, operations, and prospects.
@@billr3053 Sometimes, with Linus, I wonder if he says the things he says just because he doesn't want a reputation as a "nay-sayer" and potentially drive off potential sponsorships down the line. Alternatively, he could just be wanting to believe that the analytical work was actually done legitimately, instead of people just saying it'll work to protect their own paychecks... kinda like when a wise man once said "if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say. "
Linus can understand problems with this, and he maybe even knows of them. But if the whole developed world is jacking off to green energy... There is no foul in him joining the fun :).
If there was wind between the mountains, the wind becomes a lot stronger. I can't imagine what it will be like when there is a strong wind, it might even topple the cranes
The wind doesn't even have to damage the cranes to render the entire thing inoperable. If wind prevents it from being used, whether it's actually broken becomes a distinction without a difference.
They literally succeeded in making a worse energy storage system in volume, energy density, cost and lifespan than lithium ion batteries. There's literally no up-side to this.
I know, use a concrete type slurry using a liquid that doesn't freeze. That way when it fails, it will not only create a flood but an environmental disaster as well. Some one should pay me billions for my snake-oil idea.
@@paulmcgrath2175 Mercury isn't even *that* toxic. Not elemental mercury anyway, it has really shitty absorption through unbroken skin and bioavailability. Mercury complexes and vapours - that's what you're after.
I've built storage systems that are 6 stories tall and fully automated... can confirm that the energy required to move a ton of product up is far more than they will ever get back out of it. Also, a pallet that gets stuck on an elevator happens occasionally, and getting it unstuck is extremely difficult.
@@zaphodthenth mostly physical issues. Sensors used for tracking get damaged or don't read correctly. Chains fall off sprockets and bind up. When that happens, and you have a 3 ton pallet halfway loaded on the 6th floor, you have to go up and get it unstuck, but the room to maneuver is minimal and repair is difficult. It doesn't happen often, but I don't see regenerative braking on a downhill slide very cost effective considering the amount of energy loss to get a load up that high is pretty significant. Pumping water uphill into a reservoir, to me, if a VASTLY cheaper system. My systems are made to automatically sort and retrieve product from warehousing. I would have to stop and do the math, but I imagine a good regenerative braking system that is capable of slowing a 6 ton loaf is only going to be 75% effective, and that is generous, and an industrial 50 hp motor for lifting might, maybe, be 75% effective and a straight up elevator with drag chain locks and lifts would probably diminish workloads by 1/2. Industrial motors lose a lot of efficiency for reliability and work. If they could engineer a system that got 35% of the energy back out of what it used, I would consider it a HUGE win.
@@mlmtraininfo YeeeeOWWW! And the scammers behind this "System" want to put hundreds of these automated systems into ONE building? Obviously they never considered the needs of the poor overworked people who'd be fixing these things 24/7.
@@zaphodthenth Industry stores wares on shelves and of course they realized, they could save SOME energy by running the unloading process through a generator. It's like modern car braking that generates energy.
I've done calculations on water towers as well, it's mainly infeasible due to huge construction costs and space for essentially very little stored energy. IIRC came to the conclusion that where I live we would need like 1 water tower per 5 houses to store energy for a week or something along those lines. Way more cost efficient to just pump water up in existing dams.
Believe it or not, many or the worlds biggest damns, have water recirculation and it really works, there are always loses, but it helps keeping damns full providing a constant energy flow.
If it would be possible to use water towers for energy storage as a secondary purpose we may as well install a water turbine electric generator into it. Anything it produces are going to be a bonus to the towers function of providing water to the connected households. This, of course is if we get enough out of it to be worth the bother and that is questionable.
water towers are meant for fire fighting and to provide water in case there is temp problem in water distribution. the times the water gets pumped in and pumped out means there is no benefit to use them as energy storage.
I'm guessing the biggest sell here is being able to use gravitational potential energy storage in places where hydroelectricity is not possible. Decentralized energy storage as well, being able to back up a local area in case of a larger grid malfunction. But of course, the numbers gotta work and that means building larger. Heavier and taller. Water pumping would still be the idea situation here, all things considered. But, looks like it would end up being far too expensive, the ROI on an emergency backup or general off-grid energy storage would be too long. It's a shame, but the numbers don't lie
If they want to generate energy that way, they should just contract with Amazon and generate electricity from moving orders from upper levels of the Amazon warehouse to the packaging and shipping level on the ground.
We are sorry to inform you that your order is delayed until further electrical power is required for the grid. If you live in 85030 zip code please consider turning on an extra light to speed your delivery. 😂 …I get what your saying and like the idea of something doing something. I’d thought for awhile something like mining crypto currency should be also tied to finding stable protein strands…might as well use that computing for something. But I just like the idea of orders sitting on top shelves waiting for grid demand.
@@primus711 Oh interesting. I had tried to hunt one out that did that quite awhile back and never ran into it. Crypto is just such a waste, that energy needs to be put to a good use.
@@Manny32V exactly! When he focuses on politics things tend to go off the rails and his habit of repeating the same thing over and over becomes intolerable. He’d be a lot more appreciated if it weren’t for his political antics/rambling.
@@brrrrrr Yeah, but just once, and its durability is considerable. Cranes are high maintenance - particularly if they're in high duty cycle applications like these would be. You'd need large diameter pulleys to improve the cable fatigue life, for example.
@@PistonAvatarGuy Well, that would certainly be a consideration if it weren't for the clear counter-correlation between 'dry' and 'suitable for a hydroelectric power station', or indeed the general congruence between 'dry' and 'flat'. Not easy to build a hydroelectric station in the flat parts of the world, though of course water towers cover both eventualities, making evapotranspiration moot. Generally speaking, though, we build hydroelectric in the sorts of places that we find reasonable amounts of water in close proximity but at differing elevations. So, not the daftest reply, but not the most insightful either.
I live near a small wind energy park near a lake. It's 10 windmills with a combined output of 35 MW. The people at Energy Vault are talking about storing energy for windless days. So lets say we calculate what we need to buffer our windpark's energy output for 1 (one) single day. Let's be ambitious and get a good start. We'll build crazy huge tower, as high as the Empire State Building. 380 meters to the top floor. We need to have a buffer of 35 MW for 24 hours. 840 MWh -> 3.02 * 10^12 Joule Potential energy, here we go! We know that E = m * g * h -> m = E / g * h m = 3.02 * 10^12 / (9.81 * 380) m = 8.10 * 10^8 kg => Roughly 15.5 times the mass of the Titanic. So in short, to buffer the energy from a small wind park for even one day, we'd need to hoist 15 Titanic ships all the way to the top of the Empire State Building. And that's not including any losses either. So you can safely add another 25% or so.
$2 Billion dollar market cap for Energy Vault? I invoke the Harry Anderson proverb: “A fool and their money… were lucky to get together in the first place.” 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
It infuriates me, as an electrical engineer, that companies like this somehow get valued at 2 billion USD, and are raking in hundreds of millions in investments. Their concept may work a little bit, but it's certainly not "the solution" that they are calling it. It will all fall apart in a few years, but to even get this much investment in the first place...
The best part is, some of those mountains are high enough that they have perpetual snow melt run off which could be redirected, captured in dams and run forever emptying back into the surrounding landscape again to be used by nature as normal. Or even redirected to water farm land or supply cities. They're so high up you could literally run multiple sets of dams and generators the whole of the way down. You could do this in the rockies on the windward side where rain is constantly falling high up in the mountains before the air passes over the mountains. Endless supplies of water just wainting to be exploited. No need to dam up rivers of fish and wildlife.
Those slabs of concrete will act as sails in the slightest of winds and would require additional workers with guide ropes to help stabilize them. In fact it would require a team of people to ensure the safety of the precarious structure no matter how slight the wind was. PS the maintenance alone would also a further team of people to ensure safety etc.
I guess the real goal is job security. If that's the case ban all machinery, and do the way it was done before the industrial revolution. You know, like serfs and slaves. Don't mind that production will precipitately drop, resulting in a famine, that will also kill about 3/4 of the world population. So we solve both the CO2 problem (after all the corpses stop rotting) and the population problem in one grand plan ! Utopia !
At that point, they might as well have a tower of draft animals turning a big wheel attached to a generator motor. That sadly would be more efficient and affordable to maintain.
I do a lot of work in commercial construction. Things quickly go south when you combine a tower crane and wind, even with operators and dogmen who know their stuff. The idea that you could automate this work even at the best of times is laughable.
Also after lifting and lowering those blocks so many times they will crack and crumble. So much cheaper to dig two ponds in the mountains and connect with a pipe, pump and generator. Could get a mining company to dig a big quarry then convert it to hold water by lining it with clay or more expensive concrete.
You could have also just dug a hole in the ground and hung a single massive steel bar on it for storage. Same system, but less complexity and without the care for wind. But of course it will never compete with the energy potential of pumped storage.
@@Skylancer727 indeed, this cranes and blocks seem just for the looks. It would be simpler to just build one massive block attach it to some rails that can lift it and move it just a couple of metters.
@@b.jellis yeah but how are you moving the water in this concept? Remember we need to think about all the ways we use the energy to understand how much we produce. This me think of an odd tidal generator but with tidal generators the force is produced by the waves bouncing it up and down. The point I was making is that there are already methods used to store power in a similar way without the complexity. And in the world of actual machines vs f**king magic complexity means more losses and more maintenance. The simpler idea is the better idea in most regards.
With the amount of concrete for the concrete blocks, you can also build a tower that is hollow on the inside and simply fill it with water. That would at least save you the crane.
My first first thought when the video started was a cable-and-pulley system like an elevator, but with just a huge counterweight, inside a hollow tower. It would still be unnecessarily complex, and there would still be energy loss, but more realistic to build and operate.
Problem is scale. Even if you made such tower, it would store just a small fraction of energy of a accumulation lake. Wault idea is already fucked at the first back of the envelope calculation.
@@greenanubis The whole system sucks. I was only concerned with the fact that a cylinder could just as well be built with the same amount of material (concrete), which you then simply fill with water. A pumped storage power plant is clearly superior here.
Yes, i guess its feasible. In the sense that you can build it with same materials and you can get some energy from it back in a remote location. For a specific price, efficiency, availability and scale.
I feel like making my collaboration with the next-gen version of this. The goal is power storage, and the idea is using heavy things up and down to store it as potential gravitational energy. But concrete blocks not only are associated with more CO2 and so forth, but they're not as heavy as they could be. What could be even heavier? _Huge lithium batteries,_ similar to those on the battery installation on South Australia. So instead of being suspended by elevator cables, they're also power cables. Even when the chemical battery is empty in the chemical sense, it can be storing energy by its weight. So, while such batteries in cars are a disadvantage for their weight, here it's transformed into an asset.
Write a script, get lots of pretty graphics, hammer social media, and you too could be the next tech billionaire. (Don't forget to cash out at the top of the hype!)
Even if the cost of the energy storing mass is effectively zero, the infrastructure and maintenance required to utilize its gravitational potential energy would still make it far more expensive than pump storage. The difference in cost economy is better measured in orders of magnitude than by percentage.
I just want to know how many of these people are going to get convicted like Elizabeth Holmes. Last I heard, she got herself knocked up in an attempt to reduce her jail time but that might just be a rumor.
They built it there so they can tap into hydropower to make it look like it's working. The building idea is brilliant. It can be completely empty. They get the funding for the complicated project and build 4 walls and a ceiling.
@@variastudios301 Need to lay the foundation though. Money stops flowing when walls and ceiling come crashing down (without generating electric energy).
In pumped (water) storage: - the mass fills the storage space perfectly, without extra mechanism (and energy) for sorting and placement - in generation mode the same is true, no need for complex mechanisms to return the stored mass to lower energy. Just let it flow down.
You could probably more cost effectively generate electricity by opening exercise gyms across the world and install a bunch of stationary bicycles with small generators hooked up to them. Each bike could produce about 100 watts of power, and although you'd never turn a profit on the electricity, you'd have a bunch of gym membership subscriptions generating income. It would make more sense than this stupid concrete block crane idea.
I’m imagining the maintenance nightmare of aging concrete concrete trips and dust on those rails… much less the cost to construct a precision machine capable of warehousing 20 ton concrete blocks like doors in monsters inc.
Question: if the only concern seems to be lifting and dropping mass, the animations show the blocks being moved horizontally. How much of the energy would be gobbled up through this action?
Thats not even a real problem. Only a third of the tower is actually useful. Why bother making it a full brick tower rather than having a crane up a cliff hauling wide and short weights. Less to be stacked, less precision needed and less room for mishaps to arise.
Almost none. They won't be flying around like they are in the animation (if they even build it), they will be moving slowly. The energy required to move a big weight on wheels isn't that large, I can roll a 9,000lb truck at work with one hand and standing upright.
The elevators in my office building break down pretty often. Can't imagine how much worse it would be carrying huge concrete bricks. The maintenance costs alone would be horrendous.
As stupid and non-functional as it is, it seems to me that building the prototype outside just makes it worse. A shell around it would at least prevent the wind from messing up whatever small functionality it could have. You're already building a tall, complicated structure with high precision parts, a roof and some walls that are just there to block wind shouldn't break the bank.
6:06 is pure comedy. Giant mountains in the back. Literally free, naturally constructed, durable, and much taller structures for actually using as energy storage.
Yeah, that's what got me the facepalm immediatly. The fact that they included it in their CGI is even worse. And the best is, (as seen in another comment), the prototype is located, "9 miles away from the Contra dam (the one from Goldeneye), which holds about 100'000'000 metric tons of water and generates about 230 GWh annually."
@@ivanlagrossemoule There's an organization that spreads dumb ideas, it's called "Idiots without borders" and they are a fantastic, for-profit company I'm Swiss by birth, but never really lived there
It takes a seriously skilled operator to be able to quickly cancel out the swing. I'm sure you could program something to take out the swing as you stop, but that would require someone with more skill than these guys have. It still wouldn't be practical though.
@@ollyrukes because then the concrete could only travel straight up and down. Their design relys on being able to pick up a block from the top of the stack, move it sideways and/or out, then setting it down. Having a cable on the bottom (connected to the clamping device that grabs the concrete) wouldn't work without some complex track system that would allow full 3d positioning, which would require a minimum of 2 cables to even try to control sway per grabbing device. Assuming you are talking about a cable from the ground, it wasn't clear to me what you meant.
Whenever I see any new technology “breakthrough” news I always think “my Thunderfoot video incoming senses are tingling” that and the “im a con man” song with elon musk puppet lol
The calculations for the concept are miscalculated /underestimated by some way which makes me question driver for this video. I’ve been in clean energy for several decades and this looks like a great addition to the rest of the solutions. We need all types of energy storage btw including hydro. This looks perfect for a desert where huge solar arrays can be deployed and the heat is to much for batteries
to use the water tower analogy...why not have the concrete mass just be one massive cylinder that rises up a central column (the column would be a guide and central hub for the lifting equipment. Then just raise/lower one huge mass?
Because the engineering involved in lifting and stabilizing a several thousand ton mass is infeasible. Not to mention building a several thousand ton object that's small enough to reasonably be moved.
@@ItsSaxiTime “ engineering involved in lifting and stabilizing a several thousand ton mass is infeasible. ” No…the idea, though not a good one in comparison to other options, is entirely feasible. In 2008 the Taisun crane in China lifted over 20,000 metric tonnes. The post refers to a central shaft…so something in between an elevator and a port crane could feasibly do such a lift. It’s just…water is a better option.
@@ItsSaxiTime Idk trains seem to do it fine like a freight train can at least weigh up to 16thousand tons and thats without being maximized to weigh as much as possible. Of course you would need an existing slope to run that up. (and you would also probably have to modifiy the interaction between "tracks" and "train" to get more traction) of course this is all still orders of magnitude worse than just pumping water but I guess it might end up more feasible than that monstrosity in the video
@@AveragePicker Thought....with it being near mountains...just have a long railway up the mountain to pull the weight up. Should be far less expensive than this crane system. Just have a massive electric winch pull it up.
I think the pumped-storage is far more effective; think about all the friction involved with stopping and starting cranes (that would translate into wasted energy) as opposed to pumps that run at a fixed RPM for a long period of time...
Well there's losses either way. But water dams scale sooooooooooooooooooo much more efficiently. You want a billion tonnes of water? really not that hard. A billion tonnes of anything else? That's on the very edge of what humanity is capable of even if everyone works together.
The cranes will need to control the descent of their blocks, which means losing energy to friction in their brakes. Plus they will need to use energy to make all the tiny adjustments to get them into place. Whereas with water pumping they just open a valve and let the water fall as fast as gravity allows. Far quicker discharge of your potential energy as well.
Yep. And building technology evolved got quite a bit since the 70s, so water towers might be feasible for flat planes territory. I've also seen an interesting idea with joggling water levels inside deep wells, though digging something like that may be more expansive than building towers.
That's because great complexity sounds like it takes genius to pull off, but it's usually the end result of someone who doesn't really know what they're doing cobbling together things until they get something that works and they don't really even understand how or why it does.
@@InfernosReaper *insert Itsagundam's favourite sound effect when bleeping out his swearing: the little 1 second sound thing of some wierd knight holding a bag of money going "whaae" (in a tone sounding like wank)*
Very merciful, Thunderf00t! I haven't looked at any numbers, but I see you refrained from mentioning the losses from friction in the indoor stacking system, or from the unrecovered energy spent accelerating the blocks. I assume there would be measurable energy expense there. Freight trains burn diesel on level tracks for some reason. At least in pumped hydroelectric gravity storage, you have the possibility of picking up water already in motion. As a kid I sometimes sailed on Lake Buchanan in Texas. My understanding is the power plant there was both steam and hydroelectric. It was too expensive to shut the steam plant down at night so they loaded the steam plant by pumping water back up into the lake for hydroelectric use during the day.
"It seems like the people crying "Debunked!" are assuming that all of the scientists and engineers at SpaceX and all of these universities haven't taken a grade eleven physics course." No, they are just counting on the people paying for their projects not having taken a grade eleven physics course.
In my career I have known plenty of dumb scientists and engineers with university degrees. Also, scientists and engineers being made/paid to work on bullshit.
Just because someone with no idea how things work says something won't work and happen to be right, doesn't make them smart. I think that was Linus' point. Usually "Science yeah!" bros who don't know their arse from their elbows, but because their favourite YTer say it, or they read an article "scientists say..." it must be right. Had Linus watched a proper video explaining why he probably would have been more accepting.
Also, just because people have degrees doesnt men they are smart either. Just because they are called a scientist or engineer does not make them smart either. They could have cheated their way through school. They could be at the minimum level of intellect needed to get through the most difficult classes. They could be really good at regurgitating information but terrible at applying it. Lastly the people hiring them might not have cared what their qualifications were if the goal was to scam people. Its almost like you should judge a company based on its products and services and not just on the name or titles of those it hires.
Prior to seeing this Energy vault idea, I had played with a design for a mass-based storage (not water) using large balls made from low-grade steel and iron scrap, and maybe some concrete - the idea being to make the balls as cheap as possible. They would be raised on a conveyor to a storage rack (on a hillside, not a tower), and they would roll down a slight incline to move them around through the rack, without additional mechanisms - like bowling balls on the return rack). To recover the energy, they would roll into a down-conveyer, and that would drive a generator. I think my idea was more workable than the Energy Vault, but I still did not proceed to a small-scale test, as I quickly realised that WATER was easier, cheaper, and more efficient.
A great idea and the system would generate more than enough power to run the camera. The about of energy required to shift these blocks around (particularly in the generator phase) seems to be ignored
I'm curious about how many cycles of this you need to store the energy just to make the steel for that construction and how many decades of use that represent.
I'd wager that you'll never get even with that because before you reach that point essentially your entire structure would have needed massive reapirs and/or replacement.
@@tranquilthoughts7233 My university capstone was about high capacity storage from renewables. Basically the cost of energy storage is so high that it isn't really viable even for proven techniques. If you could build one in a place like Commiefornia which has so much renewables that they continuously have to disconnect parts of grid so it doesn't overflow, then you might be able to get something which works, but there are cheaper energy generation options than storage ones. I saw a vid (might have been from Practical Engineering, not 100% sure) where they went through why Western countries are not building more nuclear from a pure economic standpoint. Basically, stuff like natural gas power plants have a third or so the time to recoup the investment but a lower lifetime income, and the entrepreneurs would rather go for the faster return on investment than play the long game.
Speaking as a former automation engineer, the control system to move the blocks would be relatively trivial without wind and nigh on impossible with wind.
As someone who has an electrical engineering degree, which included programming microcontrollers and PLCs to do automation, I concur. The wind can be compensated for to a point, but at a certain point, the costs will get so high that you'd be better off setting the bricks on fire and trying to use the retained ambient heat to power a turbine... which there are far better materials for...
@@InfernosReaper Yep, I guess in theory you could get each brick in perfect alignment with the brick below using something like multivariate control. But you'd be smashing the bricks together in achieving this. So yeah, light the bricks on fire 🤣
To get the centimeter to millimeter repeatability they want, they'd need to start taking into account things like the cable creeping over its lifetime and bending in a nearly imperceptible arc due to the wind... The best way to do this IMO would be to fully motion track the blocks on the approach using laser interferometry/LIDAR and reflectors. It'd need to be completely closed-loop. Gathering data with multiple meteorological stations across the height of the crane, and then training a control system to adjust the move faster than a human could. This still doesn't solve the problem that wind over time is basically unpredictable on a local scale or that operations would need to stop immediately if safe wind speed limits were exceeded.
Wrong. You do it with active monitoring, computer vision, and automation software. It’s a solvable problem. That’s part of what enables the innovation here.
@@andybaldman I think three years should've been enough to demonstrate enough progress with these control systems to produce a demo for it, wouldn't you agree? Instead they abandoned the entire crane concept. Some innovation, huh.
Disclaimer: Energy Vault is an absurd concept, and building it in the swiss alps is even dumber. Even on relatively flat ground, digging a big hole seems easier. I think Thunderf00t's point would have been made stronger if he was more charitable in his "back of the envelope" calculations. In that image, there are ~40 bricks. If we assume they build in such a way that the base layer of a tower has at least one more brick than the layer above, we could get two "pyramids" of height 6 with 42 bricks. That would give us 2*(1*5+2*4+3*3+4*2+5*1)=45 brick-brickheight units of energy. Each brick-brick height unit is 4*10*20,000J, or 800,000J. So a total of 36,000,000J by my count. Exactly 10 KWH. Even if we wanted to be REALLY charitable, we could give them 4 towers of heigh 10 (though I'm skeptical of their stacking). That would give them (9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1)*4=180 BBH, or 144,000,000J. Just about enough to half charge a tesla. When you give really uncharitable calculations, IMO it just makes it easier for the targets of your criticism to dismiss it. I can see the response now "that video calculates how much the vault WAS storing in that image, not how much it COULD store". Might as well cut them off at the knees rather than give them that chance
While I do agree, these people have their minds made up that it's a great fucking idea. Long and the short of it is that 1 block changing in height by 1 block is really not much energy, and multiplying it by 1000 is still not much energy.
Yeah, whenever I do calculations like this I always take the best case scenario, 100% conversion efficiency and all like assuming solar panels convert 100% of the sunlight that hits them into energy despite only being around 20% in reality and taking entirely optimal conditions like no clouds on the hottest day in a desert. I use very generous calculations like that to really drive the point home when idiots ask why you cant just put solar panels on planes and drones or even cars. Then to further drive the point home I'd explain how many solar panels they'd actually need and take the average distance driven per day by the average person and show how many football fields worth of sunlight you'd actually need to actually generate enough energy for daily use, even calculating the cost of all those panels to show how it would be more expensive than a lifetime supply of gasoline with none of the hassle. I dunno why he's taking practically the worst case scenario when even best case scenario, even with all the bricks magically floating at the top of the crane, still wouldn't hold any meaningful amount of energy... Idiots are just gonna "debunk" him by saying "well they havent added all the bricks in yet, it's still a work in progress." He should've just taken the entire effective volume of the crane, multiplied that by the density of concrete, then assumed all that mass was at the very height of the crane and taken energy readings from that because even that wouldn't be enough for the average household. Better than ideal situations costing millions of dollars and it still can't even provide energy needs for a single family, that really drives the point home...
First thing that came to mind. Dont we already have "Gravity energy storage", we call them water towers. We also use this "technology" for elevators, and other lift systems.
The "gravity energy storage" in water towers is used to maintain water pressure, you wouldn't gain much benefit trying to do much else with it because you'll mess up the water pressure else.
They are surely powered from the regular electricity grid. But you know, you have to convince dumb green politicans right at the spot to give you tax money.
NO way in hell, standard EV chargers expect stable voltage input no matter the load. You'd need a custom made charger that can handle varying input voltages, up to temporary loss of input power.
Some counter points. Not that I disagree with you I just think you're being a bit harsh on the newer skyscraper thing. You already mentioned a few of these points in the video but 1. Water as you already mentioned is 1000kg/m^3 while concrete is 2300. Much more space efficient. And if you don't have a lot of water in the area transporting it too a water tower presents its own difficulties (piplines, water trucks etc) 2. Water evaporates and is a precious resource especially in areas like Nevada and California, mind you both of these states have contracts with the company. (this should be number one tbh) 3. Pump efficiency, it seems the industry standard is around 70 to 90% I'm not sure about the coefficients of friction and general mechanical efficiency of their system (I'm not that far into thermodynamics) but regardless its something to consider. And either way this is to capitalize on excess energy, it's not the MOST pressing variable. 4. We've seen in China during covid how efficient construction can be with premanufactured parts, this system leverages such economic principles. 5. Dams have to be custom built due to terrain and construction will be much more difficult and costly because of that and have their own ecological problems, i.e. hoover dam downstream :(. This just needs plenty of flat ground, which America has in excess. 6. Though I'm not a Mormon, I trust their judgment in such matters. www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221212005228/en/NV-Energy-Selects-Energy-Vault-for-440-MWh-Energy-Storage-System-in-Nevada Is this the end all be all to the problem of inconsistent renewable energy. No. But in certain geographic and ecological conditions nothing in my head is ringing alarms bells, other than the maintenance of the concrete and the mechanical systems themselves. Most of the practical criticisms you levied against the crane don't apply to the skyscraper anyhow.
Tech Sammer: "Hey, using our collective passion for innovation. We have surpassed the current generation, power grid solutions." Me: "Oh, cool. Do you guys got a demo?" Tech Scammer: "Yes, of course. Our engineers created this detailed simulation of the project." Me: "Ah, what software did you use to successfully simulate the complexity of the power grid?" Tech Scammer: "Uhm... well... Blender... and Adobe Premiere..." Me: "Well, one is 3D modeling software and the other is a video editing software...." Me: "So you have nothing?" Tech Scammer: "Well... we do have this cool video!"
I haven't gotten to the end yet so forgive me if he covers this, but when a cable or pulley fails and a 20 ton brick falls does it do the same damage as 20 tons of water falling down a pipe into a turbine?
The simple answer is yes,,,,,but you don't get blocks of water "falling" onto a static turbine blade. The 20 tons of water is part of a continuous stream falling onto already rotating blades. Starting the turbine would be a gradual buildup of RPM by regulating the valve. Dynamic condition rather than static.
No, water is more dangerous if it was the only thing falling because it's a small flash flood in the immediate area. The brick would break and there would be some Sharpnel, but the water would push you off your feet and you'd fall on your head.
@Hattie Lankford Well, in the water scenario, the water is supposed to be dropping into the turbine anyway. The wrost outcome is that the blades of the turbine are damaged and will have to be fixed. The brick falling means that the rest of them will fall like Dominos, along with the crane.
Their motto should be "Energy Vault: More complicated and less efficient than traditional pumped storage. Also not economically nor technically viable!"
Years ago I too had the idea for gravity energy storage, so I dusted off my highschool physics and in 15 minutes I realized how stupid of an idea it was. It blows me away that they even wasted their effort making a rendering. But now they even built a full scale proto type? They aren't even doing the scam right. Your supposed to run away with the money not try to build the rediculous thing.
If they just took off witht he money they could be charged with fraud. If they build it and say "we didn't know it wouldn't actually work" then they aren't legally scammers, just failures.
To be honest: I think quiet a few of those "scam companies from kickstarter" start as "visionaire projects" from a design school or mba type student. They probably think they got a good idea that "with enough research" is possible. You could see that pretty clearly with many of those water-extraction devices imo. Then they start hiring some poor sobs that just got their engineering or physics degree and pretty soon it is clear that this idea was not realised as a product yet because you cannot break some limits. Like energy needed for phase changes. Like engineering challenges for vacuum. Let us be real - we got pretty close to some real physical limits. Transistors will not get much smaller anytime soon. Precision manufacturing got pretty much "good enough for most things" for a remarkable low price. Many people still have this romantic idea that "if you put enough R&D in a project" it can be realised in a decade. Which was sort of true 30 years ago. But now we got an international connected research exchange. And also the world population doubled twice in the last 100 years and the majority of those don't need to be farmers anymore and got time for ideas. It is just really unlikely that some revolutionary new idea has not been thunk before...
I guess once the money starts rolling in from kick starter they have a steady job until the funds dry up. Perhaps they feel it's their duty to pursue their donators wishes even after they realize it's a bad idea.
@@pulgadog9590 I wonder if you could build a gravity battery on the side of a mountain, so you'd have something steady, no need to build support structure, you'd probably have to try to smooth the angle of the mountain or hill side so it's constant.
@@Albtraum_TDDC That was literally where my thought process went too after realizing how large the system would need to be for any meaningfully grid storage. I then thought of water filled containers to replace the impractical expensive concrete blocks but that's when I realized I was just inventing a crappy version of a hydro electric dam/ pumped storage.
i argue that these bricks actually weigh closer to 72 tonnes. based on the picture shown at 7:20, it looks like its 2 x 3 x 5m. and with a density of 2.4 tonnes/m3. 72 tonnes seems more accurate. concrete is very dense. since its just a picture. i would be conservative and say 60 tonnes though
I work on cranes for a living. It is energy intensive just to lift and lower the hooks. When you start lifting loads the energy you put in is no where near what you can get out by lowing it. There are hybrid cranes that store the hydraulic pressure from lower a load, but they can only use that captured energy to start energy intensive movements.
To be fair, the cranes you work on for a living is designed specifically to lift and lower. Energy capture is the least on their mind. But still this idea is so ridiculously bunk regardless, because of tons of failure points, a very mechanical setup, wind, variety of other issues like ... temperature expansion and far more. A crane like this will not last long under continues operation without tons and tons of maintenance... whereas hydro-pumps and for that matter gravity based hydro generators do also require maintenance, but not to the degree of precision mechanics.
@@greenanubis No energy storage mechanism gives back what you put in. And yea that was my point. This has so many issues, so many points of failure it is ridiculous. Their new concept is fucking ridiculous as well. Even more mechanics, even more maintenance.
@@SioxerNikita Yes because companies love to spend more on fuel/electricity than the need to get work done in the same time frame. Cranes are designed to get the most out of what ever energy source they are designed to use. So if they are doing it as efficient as possible to save as much fuel/electricity and they can't capture the same or more than what is put in, then why makes you think a company that sprung up overnight would have figured out what crane companies that have been around for over a hundred years couldn't. Every large manufacturer of cranes spends millions every year to make their cranes more efficient and use less fuel/electricity. Now go back and do some research before coming at me with this weak sauce.
@@quazy1328 A) Wtf'ing nerve you got. I do agree with you, trying to make something that reclaims tons of energy is fucking stupid in this manner. B) Adding additional complexity to your machine simply to get a potential gain back, requiring more specialized people to work them, etc... is not worth the potential money saved... not even close. Yeah, companies spending millions to make them more energy efficient WHILE making them reliable, making them function under specific stresses, etc... but adding in energy reclamation will inevitably make them LESS reliable. Sometimes money saved does not equate to doing the job quicker, even if you OVERALL spend more money... C) I never even got close to fucking claiming this company got ANYTHING figured out. They are obviously dumb as fuck, or know they are doing something dumb simply to earn money... Aka... scam.... D) From an actual energy perspective, if you lift up a rock... you can get a certain percentage of the energy back, and frankly a decent amount if you have an efficient system. What this company claims to do might TECHNICALLY work on paper, and even realistically capable of getting a decent amount of the energy back that they put in, but the fact there are tons of better solutions out there is what makes it redundantly stupid... You could make cars that get the majority of energy back when breaking... that would also introduce a significantly higher mechanical complexity... which would require more maintenance, and more potential points of failure... but who in their right mind would do that? Some city busses uses heavy fly wheels to spin up and down when accelerating and decelerating, which is something that is actually viable to smack into a personal car... it is also only really efficient if you do a lot of starting and stopping, because... well... you also have an added weight... you also have another issue, your breaking length will become longer, because to actually reclaim that energy you don't want to apply brake discs as your primary source of breaking... which is a trade off... The whole point here is just because you CAN reclaim the energy... it is often not worth doing it... because when you want do that, there is trade offs... So please go do your own research before you come at me with your own weak sauce... More things than one variable is in play here... Apparently the only variable you are thinking is "ENERGY RECLAMATION GUD IF PUSIBLE! DUS COMPS WULD'AVE DONE IT!"... as if there isn't other variables...
Not just salary. You bait investors and when money stops flowing you cash out and retire in a different country under a different name. It's just that easy. The Theranus lady was too greedy and waited for too long before bailing, which is why she got into trouble that could easily be avoided.
I think I spotted a flaw in Thunderfoot's logic. Clearly those blue blocks are not concrete, that would be ridiculous. Those are energon cubes, so now it all makes perfect sense :)
That makes it a target for the terrorist group called the Decepticons! The security costs of hiring Autobots to defend the installation would really make it too costly!
Would the tower from the concept video collapse by its own weight? Moreover, water storage systems are used to compensate peaks in the electric system by flushing water from the upper basin into the valley. But with concrete blocks, you can't regain as much energy in such a short time.
You might need to do some kind of reinforcement for the bottom blocks to give them extra strength. Plus, regular inspections of each block to make sure it isn't damaged and posing a risk of breakage or collapse. Regular movement will inevitably lead to more damage than a stationary structure.
Fun fact: Energy Vault's demonstration system in Arbedo-Castione Switzerland is located 69km south of a 1,000MW pumped hydro system. Linth-Limmern stores energy in about 24 million tons of water lifted 600m up by pumping from the lower reservoir.
I wonder how long it would take for this thing to pay for itself.. or to produce the amount of energy it took to make it, transport it, and put it together.
Infinity... and that's being generous. This is supposed to be green solution but concrete has a massive CO2 cost to produce. It would be worse than nothing.
Not to refute anything you said, doctor, but one of the reasons some may be looking for non water gravity storing is that we're running out of water in rivers and lakes as we speak. Y. Arthus-Bertrand spoke on the topic at length in his film "Home".
"Its like these debunkers have not taken a grade schools physics course" - Its like these "educated tech communicators" have never actually tried to implement their ideas into practice for real.
It was the other way around, that the debunkers assume that all these people working on the project haven't even taken a grade 11 physics course. Which I understand makes sense intuitively, because why would it be possible to hire a bunch of engineers and so on if the concept is flawed at the start? Like obviously there's people working on the details on this that has to realize the flawed nature of it, yet the company keeps on going. I suppose it's the standard of not assuming malice, and particularly so when there's "respected" people involved. The implication of debunking something like this or hyperloop is that whomever is at the top of the company makes sure to keep the engineers quiet and keep trying to sell the snake oil knowing _fully well_ that it's not a possible business and is intentionally a scam from that point on.
Very smart people can still be bamboozled. In fact, there are some theories in psychology that explain why smart people do stupid things due to arrogance/overconfidence that Thunderfoot alludes to in this part of the video. Then you get into sunk cost fallacies and it's a whole train ride to scam city as the fast talkers keep the whole thing going. Like a magician who flawlessly covers for his assistant screwing up by taking all of the audience's attention, there are obvious cracks that people just can't see through the flash and showmanship.
I recall oh so many years ago on AOL in the astronomy area some fruitcake pushing "UFO" technology. Repeatedly, we were told it was ready to go, and with enough money, the fruitcake could develop it. I'll give the turdburglar credit for persistence in ignoring the clash there. Why was money needed for development if it were ready to go? It involved something about draining energy from the spin of electrons. Lots of platitudes were offered but no actual math. Apparently math and physics were invented for the sole purpose of suppressing the invention.
Ask a crane company if they can build you an expensive crane? They say of course, after all the're in the business of building cranes! The crane company doesn't care what you use it for as long as they get paid. Regenerating drives are pretty much standard on most large cranes, so I doubt there has been that much 'engineering' involved in the build of this prototype just reuse of existing components. On the plus side there will be a large second hand construction crane going cheap next year. I'm pretty sure liebherr will have another nice white rental crane in their fleet once that other fraud Musk is found out. Double win you get them to buy it, then you take it back at a fraction of the price and rent it out for the next 20 years. Woohoo, free money!
In fact, making a concrete donut that is rotating to store energy makes sense. There were buses that used electric motors to transfer energy into a flywheel at stops and the flywheel released that energy back allowing the bus to reach the next stop. If these folks had built a huge concrete flywheel, that would be much easier, I guess, than stacking blocks. Also, they could sell tickets to ride on this wheel (they would need to add some decorations, though).
It would make more sense to build it on the side of a sheer cliff having 1 or two elevators, with an “ammo magazine” top and bottom. As to eliminate the need for precise stacking. Pick it up off a belt, put it onto a belt, pull them out and drop them to the lower belts when needed. The problem is that it’s still pointless compared to pumped hydro, even even with the best of optimizations.
Hey Thunderf00t, love the videos. It’s nice hearing someone with an actual brain talk about this stuff. My only request, could you turn up the volume on your videos. I watch them on my tv and they’re always kinda quiet. I have to crank up the volume so when an ad break hits it blows my ear drums out! lol Thanks
The stacking alignment issue could be easily taken care of with self-alignment profiles. If you were foolish enough to do something like this pipe dream at all though, you'd build a structure to hold the blocks at a higher point - you wouldn't stack blocks on blocks where the bottom tier has zero potential energy and so on. Or you increase the mass, reduce the height you raise - to that end, perhaps a solid guided deck rather than individual blocks, raised incrementally on many timed short stroke screw jacks and long stroke hydraulic linear actuators for the journey down, running hydraulic motors connected to the generators. But all in all, it's only going to result in very expensive electricity. Hydro water storage is a much smarter move.
hell, converting water to hydrogen, storing it, and then burning it when on demand power is needed in closed system would be a better system than the drop weight system, since that doesn't scale up well at all from the original implementation of such a system: using it to power a single light bulb.
That's a whole lot of BS talk, telling me you are still wet behind the ears. Show your work next time. 'Self alignment profiles' my ass. Design something that stacks without friction losses, that won't chip away, that is inexpensive to build. You can go back to playing with your wood blocks now, son.
Whenever you see a video with synthesizer violins and cellos playing a chirpy tune, while someone tells you they have 'vision', 'passion' and 'dedication', you know it's a scam.
What got me the second I saw the system was the bottom rows... after about a two thirds the way down it seems like your "storage blocks" are lower than the outer ring. Meaning the bottom few layers are completely useless in the inner ring because if you lift them out to stack them you'd burn energy not release it.
Right in the opening buzzword video they nearly told the truth. "Energy vault gravity-based energy storage a design to power our lives and to enable a renewable world." It should have read. "Energy vault gravity-based energy storage a design to power our lies and to enable a renewable stock price."
And that is how it got to 2 bi,by targeting the most tech and science illiterate crowd in the world;green activists.The sooner we make the public realize renewables are a scam the better.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 they never will because they want perfect solution for the problem and will believe anyone who tells them what they want to hear, despite the evidence
you know I was considering an household gravity energy storage something like an elevator shaft to store idk solar panel energy. then I did the calc and 1 ton of concrete (less than a cubit meter, reasonable for a shaft) will store the daily energy need of one houseold if the the shaft is 10 Km tall! (or again 33m shaft for bringing one liter of room temeperature water to boil). The orders of magnitude are so much stacked against this
Yep, anyone sane enough to do a few lines of math would discard this idea just in the middle of calculations, realising this is few orders of magnitude off from viable solution.
I was thinking maybe use more concrete, but it seems it would be best to just raise the whole building up with a crane, personally I think that's a revolutionary ingenious idea.
@@Apodeipnon No you are terribly wrong. if you do the maths, if you want to store say 25% of the daily energy used by an household you need 144MJ. Say you use the Burj Khalifa, tallesest building in the world with 830m you need 17 ton of concrete. you need 7 cubic meter of concrete and that's a lot. For 25% of one family. Having access to the tallest building in the world. It's a stupid idea and the order of maginitude are against this
Holy market capitalisation Batman! I had no idea they were a listed company. I thought they'd just wither away and die a quick death. Now this boondoggle is going to drag on for years!
Solar roadways 2.0
You look at a company like Gravity Vault and thinks, "Maaaan, I'm goona make millions shorting this thing, let's buy some puts asap!!!" And then you remember that the same dumbos that made it's valuation go to 2 billion dollars will probably pour even more money into this dumpster fire. Being dumb doesn't necessarily mean losing it all, just like being right doesn't translate into making bank in the market. The world surely ain't fair is it?
It almost seems like these guys only do it for the money and don't really care about the planet.
Hmmm.... short?
Isn't this one of those - we own 0.5% of the company for $10 million - so the company's worth $2B type of ordeals?
How to know if a science or technology product is a scam:
1. Cello or Violin music plays
2. Deep voice narrator
3. "It's gonna change the world" or "it will revolutionise everything you know", big lofty claims about society at large and "humanity moving forward" without any actual explanation of the product and how it works
4. Stock footage of plants growing, or children playing, or cityscapes.
5. Lots of CGI
That female voice sounded similar to the waterseer video voice.
@@jasm.5823 Yeah I think it's a text to speech voice
You have to have a thick nondescript accent as well.
But, but, but, if I invest all money in this thing and lose it all, it WILL change MY world.
I think that's the point they're making.
that is how I find my favorite violin melodies
Even if you ignore his concerns:
- crane structure uses lots of steel
- you need a ton of concrete blocks
Both of which require substantial amounts of energy to produce and are among the highest polluting industries.
I think, sir, you will find that you actually need _multiple_ tons of concrete blocks!
...because they weight more than one ton each. It's a joke about how the word 'ton' is used in weird ways in English.
Unlike a reservoir storage, which is build with heavy construction equipment and made from concrete.
The thing is just how incredibly inefficient this method of storage is, compared to just pumping water uphill. One way or the other concrete and steel will be involved, but at least the water doesn't need to be replaced in reservoir storage. Well, unless you suddenly get much less precipitation, due to a shift in climate.
@@EdwardHowton Long, short, gross register or metric tons of concrete blocks?
@@ayumikuro3768 crap ton
@@DanGeospatial So at least 315 stones?
I had an idea in my mid 20s (about 12 years ago) that I called "Gravity Wells." I got all excited about it, and wrote up a design. After a little writing, I was far less excited because the hole I'd have to dig would have to be massive, making it impractical. So I switched the design to be above ground, but there were so many safety concerns and confounding factors that I was losing all excitement over the idea (all this over the course of about 48 hours). Then I had an epiphany, I could use water! Oh yes, that would be far easier... but I'd still need a water tower. Wait, what if I just used a pond and a hill... at which point I realized I'd been an idiot and re-invented hydraulic power, but dumber.
I never would have thought that grown-ass people would invest a bunch of money making a proof of concept for an idea I'd had and discarded as a total failure in my mid-20s.
I still have a notebook of a ton of rubbish ideas I discarded, just in case there are people who want to waste a ton of money on a fool's errand ;)
You having this "stupid" idea, might make you an idiot.
You getting to the right conclusion, and the best solution to date, in a few hours, makes you not an idiot at all.
It shows that your reasoning is pretty sound.
@@xmtxx Why are you putting quotes around stupid, it's your word not his? And I would beg to disagree; having a stupid idea does not make anybody an idiot. We're human, we're allowed to have stupid ideas without automatically being designated idiots
One note of correction: I think you mean "hydroelectric energy storage" rather than "hydraulic power".
@@alexander9703 yeah that was exactly my whole point. Did you read my whole comment?
I put stupid in quote, because it wasn't that stupid after all.
Exactly. Anyone thinking about this for 5 minutes will end up coming to the same conclusions.
The energy required to render those CGI graphics is more then their energy vault stores.
This is not even a joke, its a fact.
Infinitely many times more, in fact.
Here in Switzerland, where Energy Vault is situated, we have a particular high knowledge of pumpstorage optimisation. Our pumpstorage lakes in the alps typically contain tens to hundreds of millions of cubic meters and will exploit a hight difference of 500 to 1'500 m, thus storing the same amount of energy as tens of millions (!) of 20 tons concrete blocs. I am happy to see that none of the major Swiss power companies or any of its leading employees support this project.
This Swiss companies get to sell excess electricity to this company, and who pays for it using dumb investor money. So I bet they're happy.
I don't see the problem. It's a harmless way to part fools from their money. It's actually kind of a public service.
Whybwould theyballow to huild such a thing when swiss already master the water storage capabilities?
@@funkaddictions Because in Switzerland we have a free market economy....
@@astronemir LOL instead of having to use electricity to pump water into the mountains, they convert it to cash right away!
I actually live very close to where they built their funny little crane in Switzerland. Here are some relevant observations:
1. Since that crane was built, I never actually saw this thing move, and I go by it several times a week during different hours of the day.
2. It is built in the region where the valleys are quite steep (1000-2000 meters above valley floor) and also quite narrow
This implicates:
a) Building a water-based energy storage is quite easy and efficient and there are a bunch of them here already
b) Caused by the mountains, we always have a strong wind system in the valleys here, often exceeding 40 km/h in spring and summer caused by thermal activity in the mountains when the sun shines. And even when this wind system is not on (e.g. on a cloudy day), the valley where EV crane is built is susceptible to normal meteo wind blowing from the north or south, because the valley is north-south oriented.
My point is, I just wanted to underline thunderf00t's point that they literally built their prototype in the worst possible spot. Thanks for your god work Phil, keep it up!
Energy Vault claims that this crane in Swiss is already delivering/storing energy for its local region! Not true???
would have been much better if they built it on top of the mountain & had the bricks travel down a rail or something getting the power that way..... then you could use the vally for all the other energy creation you have mentioned.
The fact they did build it and your report in addition give me the impression they thought it would be helpful to invest some money to get some more. Theranos even took it a step further and degraded honest scientists to stage actors to keep the show running.
@@nickkuhl3426 Of course it's not. If it did, it would be in continuous operation. There's no way this thing works.
I wonder, maybe they did choose this spot for a reason. Its such a bad spot, that everybody can see it and they might just state, that concept is correct. Just the spot was not optimal, sorry for that. And the scam can continue for few more years.
I think you are a bit unfair here, Thunderfoot.
"This can power a kettle for an hour."
No one does that. You run the kettle 2-3 min to have hot water. Which means, you can run 10-15 kettles with the device. And on average, you can do 2 cups of tea with a kettle. So you en up with like 30 cups of tea.
So, there is enough energy in this to make a well deserved hot tea for the whole energyvault team after a hard day of work in those cold mountains.
Well worth it and satisfying.
:D
Unless is it a million times cheaper to buy a few cups of tea from the nearby store 😀
Ok, at first I thought you were being serious. Well played sir, well played ;-)
How big are your teacups? Or how small is your kettle?
@@My1xT Yeah, and how big is the energy vault team, really?
Honestly this is one of my favourite channels. As someone in STEM I know how easy it is to get caught up in futuristic dreams. Thunderfoot is the guy who knocks you back down to reality, every single time.
Never got caught up in futuristic dream, tell me, how do people do it?
You can literally debunk any of these with highschool physics, I never went to university nor explored physics beyond highschool, and there's literally nothing about any of things Thunderf00t debunked so far that I couldn't calculate myself.
@@kirayoshikage4057 "You can literally debunk any of these with highschool physics, I never went to university nor explored physics beyond highschool, and there's literally nothing about any of things Thunderf00t debunked so far that I couldn't calculate myself."--
Which shows you just how ignorant most of the people on social media are that cheer these ideas and denounce those that prove them to be bullshit.
There needs to be a balance. To be honest it’s way easier to knock down dreamers than to try. So while I like him dunking on actual scams it’s pretty toxic to hold every idea to such standards. We need people who believe better things are possible and try making them a reality, and often failing but sometimes succeeding. Just as much as we need thunder foot to stop 2 billion dollar scams.
@@astronemir Oh, it is toxic to hold every idea to such standards? What standards exactly? Not breaking laws of thermodynamics in your pipe dream is now apparently too much of a standard for you and you cannot cope with reality you live in? Sounds like you need a professional to talk to and not someone to lower their standards from the bottom of the barrel all the way down to the cold solid bedrock.
meh, between him and linus hating tesla it does get a bit dumb sometimes...hyperloop dumb starlink starship pretty neat and working though
10:13 Fun fact: This thing is just 9 miles away from the Contra dam (the one from Goldeneye), which holds about 100'000'000 metric tons of water and generates about 230 GWh annually.
At first Sean Bean wanted to build a giant crane to drop a metric sh*t ton of concrete bricks on London, but then he consulted with his science staff and they went with the satellite idea instead. This company is just using his abandoned test base.
GIGA watt hours?!
@@bobwalsh3751 Great Scott!
and 230 volts
LOL, the irony is quite bitter here.
My company spent years perfecting a fully automated system to pick up one of our products and drop it into a vial. That was a few cms of movement with
But dude, glowing bricks!!!
Not to mention how prevalent hydroelectric power is in the Alps. Where Switzerland is located. Maybe in the flat regions of Europe, like northern Germany or the Netherlands I would at least understand this brain fart. It would still be stupid, but at least you can't have reservoir storage as easily there.
@@ayumikuro3768 The problem is that every possible location is already in use in the Alps. There isn't much more storage capacity left.
Dividella? Used to operate one of those. Finicky as hell. Suction cups to lift vials of injectable medicine and put them in cardboard boxes. Lotta smashed glass, and that's also just a few centimeters of movement.
Neat to watch them work, though. It's a good job when every day feels like you're in an episode of How It's Made, even if it's a re-run.
@@walli6388 Be better to locate a large water storage tank on the top of the hill behind it.
I thought there could be no idea worse than reusable toilet paper. I was wrong. Thank you for your service thunderf00t
reusable toilet paper is called a towel LOL
@@sinephase hahahah
@@sinephase the Romans used a wet sponge.
@@Albtraum_TDDC I know, I watched Spartacus LOL freaking nasty
Reusable Toilet paper? Lmfaoooo
The concrete storage rack idea is going to have a lot of energy loss due to friction and has lots of points of failure and wear and tear on the concrete handling systems. Lots of places that will need to be lubricated.
True. And any losses to friction are either used to damage the system or generate heat.
What is worse is the grand scheme skyscraper idea is totally unmaintainable, if not outright inoperable. Inspecting it, repairing it, and upkeeping it are going to be nightmares. And a single failure is unlikely to have a constrained/confined effect, because there is an extremely strong financial incentive against a resilient structure: the whole thing must be designed to facilitate rapid transport, which is the antithesis of safety.
@@TigerKhan1990 nah, they could vacate some lines from blocks to work on them, it doesn't look like a problem
Reminds me of those auto car storage systems for parking garages. I think there are videos of those things dropping cars so yeah.
They better build this at the bottom of a giant lake filled with oil. instant lubrication. :P
And why would you want to store "green" Energy in concrete anyways? Concrete is not exactly known for being super co2 friendly, lol.
cheap and durable. as materials go it's sensible to build with
@@Graknorke Concrete produces up to 90% of its weight in CO2. So each of those 10 tonne blocks could require 9 tonnes of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere.
Water, on the other hand, literally falls out of the sky and its 'production' has zero carbon emissions.
The concrete companies supports this...
It's like "Green" companies aren't actually green and it's all a massive grift or something.
@@chrischandler4151
how do you think you're going to build the dams to pump water up to? going to be concrete. the vault building is still questionable but the concrete is the least questionable part of it
15:40 - the first several rows of concrete blocks are "fake" - their crane system uses a hoist which attaches to two holes cast into the block - the yellow apparatus. If you look at the rest of the blocks stacked around the crane - there are no holes on top... Which means they cannot be lifted into place by this crane lol!
ahahah! I love watching these kind of "investment opportunities" go broke. The new google keywords are: _energy vault fraud_
SERP preview:
LAS VEGAS, May 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- 1791 Management ("1791") filed a Securities Fraud and Market Manipulation Lawsuit against Energy Vault Inc (NRGV). The action charges Energy Vault with intentional violations of securities laws and fraud, including deliberate fraudulent misrepresentations and omissions relating to the company's business, operations, and prospects.
That linus quote never gets old. Keep it up Sir TF.
Linus didn't even realized that those scientist and engineers are getting paid.
Sounds like Linus didn't take grade 11 physics either if he thinks he can counter Thunderf00t with his smarmy arrogance..
@@billr3053 Sometimes, with Linus, I wonder if he says the things he says just because he doesn't want a reputation as a "nay-sayer" and potentially drive off potential sponsorships down the line.
Alternatively, he could just be wanting to believe that the analytical work was actually done legitimately, instead of people just saying it'll work to protect their own paychecks... kinda like when a wise man once said "if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say. "
Linus can understand problems with this, and he maybe even knows of them. But if the whole developed world is jacking off to green energy... There is no foul in him joining the fun :).
Thunderfoot is just awful though. He lies to you on purpose. Think critically please
I want to know more about these amazing cables that never need to be replaced in this crane, or the elevators that replace it.
I used to like going snowboarding, and spent a fair amount of time contemplating the lifespan of steel cables.....
They're made of Adamantium laced Unobtanium! :'D
Cables? Naah! Of course they will use frictionless linear motors, basically a vertical maglev 😂
@@RCake don’t forget, it will be in a vacuum tube.
I also want to know how much power their computers need to operate when they "extract" the energy.
They could use this to store energy from all the nearby solar roadways to power a hyperloop. The future is gonna be awesome. :-)
You don't need to power a hyperloop, it runs on thorium. XD
Why did this make me laugh so hard. It just makes me imagine like a little kid playing with toys and building a make believe system as such
@@Lorens4444 It doesnt run on anything tho..... since yknow.... it doesnt exist
lol you guys laugh but hyperloop appears to be going forward. Many engineers on board (no pun intended) that probably understand it better than most.
@@JunkBondTrader Oh sweet summer child
If there was wind between the mountains, the wind becomes a lot stronger. I can't imagine what it will be like when there is a strong wind, it might even topple the cranes
Putting tower cranes at great heights above the ground is an old and well-proven technology.
@@TIO540S1 LOL. But careful, some idiots may take your seriously
Someone looked at Ready Player One stacks and designed the crane tower based on em.
@@TIO540S1 and watching them not be able to operate because of hail, rain, wind, ice or snow.
The wind doesn't even have to damage the cranes to render the entire thing inoperable.
If wind prevents it from being used, whether it's actually broken becomes a distinction without a difference.
They literally succeeded in making a worse energy storage system in volume, energy density, cost and lifespan than lithium ion batteries. There's literally no up-side to this.
Personally, I love how it's somehow worse energy system than one of those shake-powered flashlights
I know, use a concrete type slurry using a liquid that doesn't freeze. That way when it fails, it will not only create a flood but an environmental disaster as well.
Some one should pay me billions for my snake-oil idea.
Doh! Mercury is the answer to my previous idea, high density and so completely toxic that I could be a super villain.
I don't think that is energy storage system at all.. looks like it consumes more energy to operate than it can store.
@@paulmcgrath2175 Mercury isn't even *that* toxic. Not elemental mercury anyway, it has really shitty absorption through unbroken skin and bioavailability. Mercury complexes and vapours - that's what you're after.
I've built storage systems that are 6 stories tall and fully automated... can confirm that the energy required to move a ton of product up is far more than they will ever get back out of it. Also, a pallet that gets stuck on an elevator happens occasionally, and getting it unstuck is extremely difficult.
You've actually built these systems? What kind of mistake or breakdown can cripple or stop the automated system?
@@zaphodthenth mostly physical issues. Sensors used for tracking get damaged or don't read correctly. Chains fall off sprockets and bind up. When that happens, and you have a 3 ton pallet halfway loaded on the 6th floor, you have to go up and get it unstuck, but the room to maneuver is minimal and repair is difficult. It doesn't happen often, but I don't see regenerative braking on a downhill slide very cost effective considering the amount of energy loss to get a load up that high is pretty significant. Pumping water uphill into a reservoir, to me, if a VASTLY cheaper system. My systems are made to automatically sort and retrieve product from warehousing. I would have to stop and do the math, but I imagine a good regenerative braking system that is capable of slowing a 6 ton loaf is only going to be 75% effective, and that is generous, and an industrial 50 hp motor for lifting might, maybe, be 75% effective and a straight up elevator with drag chain locks and lifts would probably diminish workloads by 1/2. Industrial motors lose a lot of efficiency for reliability and work. If they could engineer a system that got 35% of the energy back out of what it used, I would consider it a HUGE win.
@@mlmtraininfo YeeeeOWWW! And the scammers behind this "System" want to put hundreds of these automated systems into ONE building? Obviously they never considered the needs of the poor overworked people who'd be fixing these things 24/7.
@@zaphodthenth These are common goods storage systems which are used all over the industry.
@@zaphodthenth Industry stores wares on shelves and of course they realized, they could save SOME energy by running the unloading process through a generator. It's like modern car braking that generates energy.
I've done calculations on water towers as well, it's mainly infeasible due to huge construction costs and space for essentially very little stored energy. IIRC came to the conclusion that where I live we would need like 1 water tower per 5 houses to store energy for a week or something along those lines. Way more cost efficient to just pump water up in existing dams.
Believe it or not, many or the worlds biggest damns, have water recirculation and it really works, there are always loses, but it helps keeping damns full providing a constant energy flow.
If it would be possible to use water towers for energy storage as a secondary purpose we may as well install a water turbine electric generator into it. Anything it produces are going to be a bonus to the towers function of providing water to the connected households. This, of course is if we get enough out of it to be worth the bother and that is questionable.
@@michaelpettersson4919 You know that those generators also cost materials and energy to create so no not worth it.
water towers are meant for fire fighting and to provide water in case there is temp problem in water distribution. the times the water gets pumped in and pumped out means there is no benefit to use them as energy storage.
I'm guessing the biggest sell here is being able to use gravitational potential energy storage in places where hydroelectricity is not possible.
Decentralized energy storage as well, being able to back up a local area in case of a larger grid malfunction.
But of course, the numbers gotta work and that means building larger. Heavier and taller. Water pumping would still be the idea situation here, all things considered. But, looks like it would end up being far too expensive, the ROI on an emergency backup or general off-grid energy storage would be too long.
It's a shame, but the numbers don't lie
If they want to generate energy that way, they should just contract with Amazon and generate electricity from moving orders from upper levels of the Amazon warehouse to the packaging and shipping level on the ground.
_Dude._ As if Amazon needs more ways to exploit their employees to death.
We are sorry to inform you that your order is delayed until further electrical power is required for the grid. If you live in 85030 zip code please consider turning on an extra light to speed your delivery.
😂 …I get what your saying and like the idea of something doing something. I’d thought for awhile something like mining crypto currency should be also tied to finding stable protein strands…might as well use that computing for something. But I just like the idea of orders sitting on top shelves waiting for grid demand.
@@AveragePicker their has been crypto that does that
@@EdwardHowton I guess your missed the sarcasm.
@@primus711 Oh interesting. I had tried to hunt one out that did that quite awhile back and never ran into it. Crypto is just such a waste, that energy needs to be put to a good use.
I love how their animation show their vault next to a perfect place for pumped hydro.
Doing amazing work. An under appreciated youtuber
this channel is very good especially when it stays away from politics. thunderf00t is a very smart dude too.
I think they built it to power a Lomi composter. 🤣
Oh yes, the unknown, under appreciated youtuber with a million subscribers.
@@Manny32V exactly! When he focuses on politics things tend to go off the rails and his habit of repeating the same thing over and over becomes intolerable. He’d be a lot more appreciated if it weren’t for his political antics/rambling.
@@jankoodziej877 well, if you compare him with the 111 million subs StupiDiePie has...
The other obvious advantage to water is the occasional bonus recharge from the atmosphere.
The storage material literally falls from the sky, or is available in unlimited quantity from the ocean, while someone has to make the concrete.
@@CatsMeowPaw you still have to make concrete for dams (I'm not arguing against pumped storage)
@@brrrrrr Yeah, but just once, and its durability is considerable. Cranes are high maintenance - particularly if they're in high duty cycle applications like these would be. You'd need large diameter pulleys to improve the cable fatigue life, for example.
Unless you happen to live in a dry region, then you just lose energy to evaporation.
@@PistonAvatarGuy Well, that would certainly be a consideration if it weren't for the clear counter-correlation between 'dry' and 'suitable for a hydroelectric power station', or indeed the general congruence between 'dry' and 'flat'. Not easy to build a hydroelectric station in the flat parts of the world, though of course water towers cover both eventualities, making evapotranspiration moot.
Generally speaking, though, we build hydroelectric in the sorts of places that we find reasonable amounts of water in close proximity but at differing elevations.
So, not the daftest reply, but not the most insightful either.
I live near a small wind energy park near a lake. It's 10 windmills with a combined output of 35 MW.
The people at Energy Vault are talking about storing energy for windless days. So lets say we calculate what we need to buffer our windpark's energy output for 1 (one) single day.
Let's be ambitious and get a good start. We'll build crazy huge tower, as high as the Empire State Building. 380 meters to the top floor.
We need to have a buffer of 35 MW for 24 hours. 840 MWh -> 3.02 * 10^12 Joule
Potential energy, here we go! We know that E = m * g * h -> m = E / g * h
m = 3.02 * 10^12 / (9.81 * 380)
m = 8.10 * 10^8 kg => Roughly 15.5 times the mass of the Titanic.
So in short, to buffer the energy from a small wind park for even one day, we'd need to hoist 15 Titanic ships all the way to the top of the Empire State Building. And that's not including any losses either. So you can safely add another 25% or so.
What happens when a block jams up in the energy vault, a rail wears out or software glitch? Once winter hits and snow flies it won't last long.
just looks like a giant billboard for terrorists "bomb here!"
What do you mean? Those problems do not exist in CGI.
Oh, you mean in the real world!
@@matteofabbris7877 thats the same thing for farming in big buildings in cities.
Easy, just reset the cgi simulation.
No problems, just add some solar roadways panel to melt the snow with...
$2 Billion dollar market cap for Energy Vault?
I invoke the Harry Anderson proverb: “A fool and their money… were lucky to get together in the first place.” 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
Can you short that stock? I bet you can :D
@@VirtuelleWeltenMitKhan thats what I was thinking. Hell, that may be the reason this actually exists.
@@moshunit96 true :D
@@VirtuelleWeltenMitKhan put options :)
It infuriates me, as an electrical engineer, that companies like this somehow get valued at 2 billion USD, and are raking in hundreds of millions in investments. Their concept may work a little bit, but it's certainly not "the solution" that they are calling it. It will all fall apart in a few years, but to even get this much investment in the first place...
Thunderfoots Role in Hbomberguys video about him; seen that?
What if it actually works though
Not to mention that, when it goes bankrupt (any day now), those 2 billion are removed from the economy.
These are the signs of the mania the market is in right now. Rampant scams and dumb ideas.
Now's your chance to short their stock and profit off their stupidity
They built it in Switzerland, a country that's as ideal as you really can be, to have pumped hydro storage literally everywhere.
The best part is, some of those mountains are high enough that they have perpetual snow melt run off which could be redirected, captured in dams and run forever emptying back into the surrounding landscape again to be used by nature as normal. Or even redirected to water farm land or supply cities. They're so high up you could literally run multiple sets of dams and generators the whole of the way down. You could do this in the rockies on the windward side where rain is constantly falling high up in the mountains before the air passes over the mountains. Endless supplies of water just wainting to be exploited. No need to dam up rivers of fish and wildlife.
Those slabs of concrete will act as sails in the slightest of winds and would require additional workers with guide ropes to help stabilize them. In fact it would require a team of people to ensure the safety of the precarious structure no matter how slight the wind was.
PS the maintenance alone would also a further team of people to ensure safety etc.
I guess the real goal is job security. If that's the case ban all machinery, and do the way it was done before the industrial revolution. You know, like serfs and slaves. Don't mind that production will precipitately drop, resulting in a famine, that will also kill about 3/4 of the world population. So we solve both the CO2 problem (after all the corpses stop rotting) and the population problem in one grand plan ! Utopia !
And one small smack into the crane supports and in a best case scenario nobody dies.
What about the pendulum effect?
At that point, they might as well have a tower of draft animals turning a big wheel attached to a generator motor. That sadly would be more efficient and affordable to maintain.
I do a lot of work in commercial construction.
Things quickly go south when you combine a tower crane and wind, even with operators and dogmen who know their stuff.
The idea that you could automate this work even at the best of times is laughable.
Also after lifting and lowering those blocks so many times they will crack and crumble. So much cheaper to dig two ponds in the mountains and connect with a pipe, pump and generator. Could get a mining company to dig a big quarry then convert it to hold water by lining it with clay or more expensive concrete.
You could have also just dug a hole in the ground and hung a single massive steel bar on it for storage. Same system, but less complexity and without the care for wind. But of course it will never compete with the energy potential of pumped storage.
@@Skylancer727 indeed, this cranes and blocks seem just for the looks. It would be simpler to just build one massive block attach it to some rails that can lift it and move it just a couple of metters.
@@b.jellis yeah but how are you moving the water in this concept? Remember we need to think about all the ways we use the energy to understand how much we produce.
This me think of an odd tidal generator but with tidal generators the force is produced by the waves bouncing it up and down.
The point I was making is that there are already methods used to store power in a similar way without the complexity. And in the world of actual machines vs f**king magic complexity means more losses and more maintenance. The simpler idea is the better idea in most regards.
Dude, why do you think nobody builds in the mountains?
Couldn't they put that crane on top of a mountain?
To expensive, just use the existing dams for the same effect.
With the amount of concrete for the concrete blocks, you can also build a tower that is hollow on the inside and simply fill it with water.
That would at least save you the crane.
My first first thought when the video started was a cable-and-pulley system like an elevator, but with just a huge counterweight, inside a hollow tower. It would still be unnecessarily complex, and there would still be energy loss, but more realistic to build and operate.
Problem is scale. Even if you made such tower, it would store just a small fraction of energy of a accumulation lake. Wault idea is already fucked at the first back of the envelope calculation.
@@greenanubis of course. It'll never scale well. However, as part of an isolated system in a remote location, it is still feasible.
@@greenanubis
The whole system sucks.
I was only concerned with the fact that a cylinder could just as well be built with the same amount of material (concrete), which you then simply fill with water.
A pumped storage power plant is clearly superior here.
Yes, i guess its feasible. In the sense that you can build it with same materials and you can get some energy from it back in a remote location. For a specific price, efficiency, availability and scale.
I feel like making my collaboration with the next-gen version of this. The goal is power storage, and the idea is using heavy things up and down to store it as potential gravitational energy. But concrete blocks not only are associated with more CO2 and so forth, but they're not as heavy as they could be. What could be even heavier? _Huge lithium batteries,_ similar to those on the battery installation on South Australia. So instead of being suspended by elevator cables, they're also power cables. Even when the chemical battery is empty in the chemical sense, it can be storing energy by its weight. So, while such batteries in cars are a disadvantage for their weight, here it's transformed into an asset.
Write a script, get lots of pretty graphics, hammer social media, and you too could be the next tech billionaire. (Don't forget to cash out at the top of the hype!)
Even if the cost of the energy storing mass is effectively zero, the infrastructure and maintenance required to utilize its gravitational potential energy would still make it far more expensive than pump storage. The difference in cost economy is better measured in orders of magnitude than by percentage.
Use sodium batteries and get even more gravitational storage!!! Half the chemical KWhs per kilo, its perfect 🤣🤣
The idea works really well. The company is worth 2B$, and that WAS the idea. No one expected this thing to work as an energy storage.
It sure is a lot easier to make money from starry eyed investors than to actually make a profit, so why bother with the latter?
"No one expected this thing to work as an energy storage."
People with more money than brains (investors) certainly did.
I just want to know how many of these people are going to get convicted like Elizabeth Holmes. Last I heard, she got herself knocked up in an attempt to reduce her jail time but that might just be a rumor.
@@cp1cupcake she had a kid in July of 2021.
@@cp1cupcake None of them will, the rich are above the law in the US.
They built it there so they can tap into hydropower to make it look like it's working. The building idea is brilliant. It can be completely empty. They get the funding for the complicated project and build 4 walls and a ceiling.
Leave out the floor to cut costs
@@variastudios301 Need to lay the foundation though. Money stops flowing when walls and ceiling come crashing down (without generating electric energy).
@@variastudios301 Chances are it's all a tax write off, so making losses is what it's about.
Got an Energy Vault advert half way through this video 😀
In pumped (water) storage:
- the mass fills the storage space perfectly, without extra mechanism (and energy) for sorting and placement
- in generation mode the same is true, no need for complex mechanisms to return the stored mass to lower energy. Just let it flow down.
Guess what works better than the "building battery?" Hydroelectric.
the Bagdad battery.
You could probably more cost effectively generate electricity by opening exercise gyms across the world and install a bunch of stationary bicycles with small generators hooked up to them. Each bike could produce about 100 watts of power, and although you'd never turn a profit on the electricity, you'd have a bunch of gym membership subscriptions generating income. It would make more sense than this stupid concrete block crane idea.
@@WarrenGarabrandt Except you only get most of your revenue in early January.
@@PsychoMuffinSDM better than lighting millions of dollars on fire in a publicity stunt.
They should just kidnap children from villages and have them turn a wheel. It's Conan-power.
I’m imagining the maintenance nightmare of aging concrete concrete trips and dust on those rails… much less the cost to construct a precision machine capable of warehousing 20 ton concrete blocks like doors in monsters inc.
yes, look at hoover dam how that concrete aged in no time...
"We are driven by our purpose, to fleece as many people as possible."
Question: if the only concern seems to be lifting and dropping mass, the animations show the blocks being moved horizontally. How much of the energy would be gobbled up through this action?
At least one nanowatt hour
Thats not even a real problem. Only a third of the tower is actually useful. Why bother making it a full brick tower rather than having a crane up a cliff hauling wide and short weights. Less to be stacked, less precision needed and less room for mishaps to arise.
have you never heard of horizontal potential energy? elon musk is getting in that market by driving teslas in a straight line. INFINITE ENERGY
Almost none. They won't be flying around like they are in the animation (if they even build it), they will be moving slowly. The energy required to move a big weight on wheels isn't that large, I can roll a 9,000lb truck at work with one hand and standing upright.
They gonna store 10 gazillion Joules with iron springs.
The elevators in my office building break down pretty often. Can't imagine how much worse it would be carrying huge concrete bricks. The maintenance costs alone would be horrendous.
As stupid and non-functional as it is, it seems to me that building the prototype outside just makes it worse. A shell around it would at least prevent the wind from messing up whatever small functionality it could have. You're already building a tall, complicated structure with high precision parts, a roof and some walls that are just there to block wind shouldn't break the bank.
if they are building a tall wall and roof might as build it into a living/working space and rent the building out
They aren't thinking that far ahead.
or just dig a tall hole? you get free batteries from the displaced earth.
@@mattstorm360 Yep. Only thinking to the point they bail on the scam and retire to a non-extradition tropical island nation.
I wonder if using an old mine shaft or something similar would work better?
6:06 is pure comedy. Giant mountains in the back. Literally free, naturally constructed, durable, and much taller structures for actually using as energy storage.
Its Switzerland, we are already doing it (not as much as i would like) and I have no idea how they got investors here
@@lordbertox4056We don't know that the investors live in Switzerland. It was probably a bunch of people who live in London, New York, and Paris.
@@the_mowron To be fair, we have idiots here in Switzerland too.
Yeah, that's what got me the facepalm immediatly.
The fact that they included it in their CGI is even worse.
And the best is, (as seen in another comment), the prototype is located, "9 miles away from the Contra dam (the one from Goldeneye), which holds about 100'000'000 metric tons of water and generates about 230 GWh annually."
@@ivanlagrossemoule There's an organization that spreads dumb ideas, it's called "Idiots without borders" and they are a fantastic, for-profit company
I'm Swiss by birth, but never really lived there
As a crane operator I would love to see this shitshow firsthand! No way in hell this is going to work!
The pendulum effect makes the original design practically impossible, even in perfectly windless conditions.
It takes a seriously skilled operator to be able to quickly cancel out the swing. I'm sure you could program something to take out the swing as you stop, but that would require someone with more skill than these guys have. It still wouldn't be practical though.
I wonder why they wouldn’t just have a cable at both ends to guide the concrete perfectly into place
@@ollyrukes because then the concrete could only travel straight up and down. Their design relys on being able to pick up a block from the top of the stack, move it sideways and/or out, then setting it down. Having a cable on the bottom (connected to the clamping device that grabs the concrete) wouldn't work without some complex track system that would allow full 3d positioning, which would require a minimum of 2 cables to even try to control sway per grabbing device.
Assuming you are talking about a cable from the ground, it wasn't clear to me what you meant.
@@2009dudeman and that operation's going to eat into the power production of the system.
@@InfernosReaper Pretty much like everything else in their "amazing" design.
Whenever I see any new technology “breakthrough” news I always think “my Thunderfoot video incoming senses are tingling” that and the “im a con man” song with elon musk puppet lol
Groundbreaking innovation? ✅
Cheesy narration? ✅
Doing it for ‘humanity’? ✅
Thunderf00t video incoming.
The calculations for the concept are miscalculated /underestimated by some way which makes me question driver for this video. I’ve been in clean energy for several decades and this looks like a great addition to the rest of the solutions. We need all types of energy storage btw including hydro. This looks perfect for a desert where huge solar arrays can be deployed and the heat is to much for batteries
to use the water tower analogy...why not have the concrete mass just be one massive cylinder that rises up a central column (the column would be a guide and central hub for the lifting equipment. Then just raise/lower one huge mass?
Because the engineering involved in lifting and stabilizing a several thousand ton mass is infeasible. Not to mention building a several thousand ton object that's small enough to reasonably be moved.
Great idea - but I thought of it several seconds before you posted, and I'v just applied for patent
@@ItsSaxiTime “ engineering involved in lifting and stabilizing a several thousand ton mass is infeasible. ” No…the idea, though not a good one in comparison to other options, is entirely feasible. In 2008 the Taisun crane in China lifted over 20,000 metric tonnes.
The post refers to a central shaft…so something in between an elevator and a port crane could feasibly do such a lift. It’s just…water is a better option.
@@ItsSaxiTime Idk trains seem to do it fine like a freight train can at least weigh up to 16thousand tons and thats without being maximized to weigh as much as possible. Of course you would need an existing slope to run that up. (and you would also probably have to modifiy the interaction between "tracks" and "train" to get more traction)
of course this is all still orders of magnitude worse than just pumping water but I guess it might end up more feasible than that monstrosity in the video
@@AveragePicker Thought....with it being near mountains...just have a long railway up the mountain to pull the weight up. Should be far less expensive than this crane system. Just have a massive electric winch pull it up.
I think the pumped-storage is far more effective; think about all the friction involved with stopping and starting cranes (that would translate into wasted energy) as opposed to pumps that run at a fixed RPM for a long period of time...
Accumulative Hydro
Well there's losses either way.
But water dams scale sooooooooooooooooooo much more efficiently. You want a billion tonnes of water? really not that hard. A billion tonnes of anything else? That's on the very edge of what humanity is capable of even if everyone works together.
The cranes will need to control the descent of their blocks, which means losing energy to friction in their brakes. Plus they will need to use energy to make all the tiny adjustments to get them into place.
Whereas with water pumping they just open a valve and let the water fall as fast as gravity allows. Far quicker discharge of your potential energy as well.
Yep. And building technology evolved got quite a bit since the 70s, so water towers might be feasible for flat planes territory. I've also seen an interesting idea with joggling water levels inside deep wells, though digging something like that may be more expansive than building towers.
Why do people forget water has friction too 🤔
You can always tell when the marketing execs are leading the tech team.
"An idiot admires complexity, a genius admires simplicity"
-Terry Davis
That's because great complexity sounds like it takes genius to pull off, but it's usually the end result of someone who doesn't really know what they're doing cobbling together things until they get something that works and they don't really even understand how or why it does.
@@InfernosReaper So, any algorithm ever :P
@@anameyoucantremember when it comes to tech companies, algorithm just means wankery
@@InfernosReaper *insert Itsagundam's favourite sound effect when bleeping out his swearing: the little 1 second sound thing of some wierd knight holding a bag of money going "whaae" (in a tone sounding like wank)*
@@airplanemaniacgaming7877 I don't get the reference, I'm afraid. I may have to look into it...
Very merciful, Thunderf00t! I haven't looked at any numbers, but I see you refrained from mentioning the losses from friction in the indoor stacking system, or from the unrecovered energy spent accelerating the blocks. I assume there would be measurable energy expense there. Freight trains burn diesel on level tracks for some reason.
At least in pumped hydroelectric gravity storage, you have the possibility of picking up water already in motion.
As a kid I sometimes sailed on Lake Buchanan in Texas. My understanding is the power plant there was both steam and hydroelectric. It was too expensive to shut the steam plant down at night so they loaded the steam plant by pumping water back up into the lake for hydroelectric use during the day.
Thermal plants can't simply start up and shut down at the drop of a hat, so you can't simply flick them off and turn them, back on in the morning.
The thought of the crane operator having a kettle up there, to boil him some tea makes me laugh.
"It seems like the people crying "Debunked!" are assuming that all of the scientists and engineers at SpaceX and all of these universities haven't taken a grade eleven physics course."
No, they are just counting on the people paying for their projects not having taken a grade eleven physics course.
In my career I have known plenty of dumb scientists and engineers with university degrees. Also, scientists and engineers being made/paid to work on bullshit.
@@dukenukem5768 Yeah, as a wise man once said, "if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say."
Just because someone with no idea how things work says something won't work and happen to be right, doesn't make them smart.
I think that was Linus' point. Usually "Science yeah!" bros who don't know their arse from their elbows, but because their favourite YTer say it, or they read an article "scientists say..." it must be right.
Had Linus watched a proper video explaining why he probably would have been more accepting.
Or they just have to do what they're told, so they can pay the rent.
Also, just because people have degrees doesnt men they are smart either. Just because they are called a scientist or engineer does not make them smart either.
They could have cheated their way through school. They could be at the minimum level of intellect needed to get through the most difficult classes. They could be really good at regurgitating information but terrible at applying it.
Lastly the people hiring them might not have cared what their qualifications were if the goal was to scam people.
Its almost like you should judge a company based on its products and services and not just on the name or titles of those it hires.
Prior to seeing this Energy vault idea, I had played with a design for a mass-based storage (not water) using large balls made from low-grade steel and iron scrap, and maybe some concrete - the idea being to make the balls as cheap as possible. They would be raised on a conveyor to a storage rack (on a hillside, not a tower), and they would roll down a slight incline to move them around through the rack, without additional mechanisms - like bowling balls on the return rack). To recover the energy, they would roll into a down-conveyer, and that would drive a generator. I think my idea was more workable than the Energy Vault, but I still did not proceed to a small-scale test, as I quickly realised that WATER was easier, cheaper, and more efficient.
4 issued patents in the US and 20 pending. That’s more than Theranos.
I hope they keep a camera on it every day, it's going to be interesting when they have to refer to it as the "Super-Jenga"
A great idea and the system would generate more than enough power to run the camera. The about of energy required to shift these blocks around (particularly in the generator phase) seems to be ignored
I'm curious about how many cycles of this you need to store the energy just to make the steel for that construction and how many decades of use that represent.
I'd wager that you'll never get even with that because before you reach that point essentially your entire structure would have needed massive reapirs and/or replacement.
Yea, thats the point kind of.
@@tranquilthoughts7233 My university capstone was about high capacity storage from renewables. Basically the cost of energy storage is so high that it isn't really viable even for proven techniques.
If you could build one in a place like Commiefornia which has so much renewables that they continuously have to disconnect parts of grid so it doesn't overflow, then you might be able to get something which works, but there are cheaper energy generation options than storage ones.
I saw a vid (might have been from Practical Engineering, not 100% sure) where they went through why Western countries are not building more nuclear from a pure economic standpoint. Basically, stuff like natural gas power plants have a third or so the time to recoup the investment but a lower lifetime income, and the entrepreneurs would rather go for the faster return on investment than play the long game.
I love that „Water from air“ ad right next to that first picture 😀
I laugh every time I see your new outro, it’s a great summation of all the dancing robot-like scams in the world.
Speaking as a former automation engineer, the control system to move the blocks would be relatively trivial without wind and nigh on impossible with wind.
As someone who has an electrical engineering degree, which included programming microcontrollers and PLCs to do automation, I concur.
The wind can be compensated for to a point, but at a certain point, the costs will get so high that you'd be better off setting the bricks on fire and trying to use the retained ambient heat to power a turbine... which there are far better materials for...
@@InfernosReaper Yep, I guess in theory you could get each brick in perfect alignment with the brick below using something like multivariate control. But you'd be smashing the bricks together in achieving this. So yeah, light the bricks on fire 🤣
To get the centimeter to millimeter repeatability they want, they'd need to start taking into account things like the cable creeping over its lifetime and bending in a nearly imperceptible arc due to the wind...
The best way to do this IMO would be to fully motion track the blocks on the approach using laser interferometry/LIDAR and reflectors. It'd need to be completely closed-loop. Gathering data with multiple meteorological stations across the height of the crane, and then training a control system to adjust the move faster than a human could. This still doesn't solve the problem that wind over time is basically unpredictable on a local scale or that operations would need to stop immediately if safe wind speed limits were exceeded.
Wrong. You do it with active monitoring, computer vision, and automation software. It’s a solvable problem. That’s part of what enables the innovation here.
@@andybaldman I think three years should've been enough to demonstrate enough progress with these control systems to produce a demo for it, wouldn't you agree? Instead they abandoned the entire crane concept. Some innovation, huh.
Disclaimer: Energy Vault is an absurd concept, and building it in the swiss alps is even dumber. Even on relatively flat ground, digging a big hole seems easier.
I think Thunderf00t's point would have been made stronger if he was more charitable in his "back of the envelope" calculations. In that image, there are ~40 bricks. If we assume they build in such a way that the base layer of a tower has at least one more brick than the layer above, we could get two "pyramids" of height 6 with 42 bricks.
That would give us 2*(1*5+2*4+3*3+4*2+5*1)=45 brick-brickheight units of energy. Each brick-brick height unit is 4*10*20,000J, or 800,000J. So a total of 36,000,000J by my count. Exactly 10 KWH.
Even if we wanted to be REALLY charitable, we could give them 4 towers of heigh 10 (though I'm skeptical of their stacking). That would give them (9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1)*4=180 BBH, or 144,000,000J. Just about enough to half charge a tesla.
When you give really uncharitable calculations, IMO it just makes it easier for the targets of your criticism to dismiss it. I can see the response now "that video calculates how much the vault WAS storing in that image, not how much it COULD store". Might as well cut them off at the knees rather than give them that chance
While I do agree, these people have their minds made up that it's a great fucking idea. Long and the short of it is that 1 block changing in height by 1 block is really not much energy, and multiplying it by 1000 is still not much energy.
Yeah, whenever I do calculations like this I always take the best case scenario, 100% conversion efficiency and all like assuming solar panels convert 100% of the sunlight that hits them into energy despite only being around 20% in reality and taking entirely optimal conditions like no clouds on the hottest day in a desert. I use very generous calculations like that to really drive the point home when idiots ask why you cant just put solar panels on planes and drones or even cars. Then to further drive the point home I'd explain how many solar panels they'd actually need and take the average distance driven per day by the average person and show how many football fields worth of sunlight you'd actually need to actually generate enough energy for daily use, even calculating the cost of all those panels to show how it would be more expensive than a lifetime supply of gasoline with none of the hassle.
I dunno why he's taking practically the worst case scenario when even best case scenario, even with all the bricks magically floating at the top of the crane, still wouldn't hold any meaningful amount of energy... Idiots are just gonna "debunk" him by saying "well they havent added all the bricks in yet, it's still a work in progress." He should've just taken the entire effective volume of the crane, multiplied that by the density of concrete, then assumed all that mass was at the very height of the crane and taken energy readings from that because even that wouldn't be enough for the average household. Better than ideal situations costing millions of dollars and it still can't even provide energy needs for a single family, that really drives the point home...
First thing that came to mind. Dont we already have "Gravity energy storage", we call them water towers.
We also use this "technology" for elevators, and other lift systems.
The "gravity energy storage" in water towers is used to maintain water pressure, you wouldn't gain much benefit trying to do much else with it because you'll mess up the water pressure else.
Lifts use counterweights.
I highly doubt those EV chargers are linked to the Energy Vault.
They are surely powered from the regular electricity grid. But you know, you have to convince dumb green politicans right at the spot to give you tax money.
NO way in hell, standard EV chargers expect stable voltage input no matter the load. You'd need a custom made charger that can handle varying input voltages, up to temporary loss of input power.
Some counter points. Not that I disagree with you I just think you're being a bit harsh on the newer skyscraper thing. You already mentioned a few of these points in the video but
1. Water as you already mentioned is 1000kg/m^3 while concrete is 2300. Much more space efficient. And if you don't have a lot of water in the area transporting it too a water tower presents its own difficulties (piplines, water trucks etc)
2. Water evaporates and is a precious resource especially in areas like Nevada and California, mind you both of these states have contracts with the company. (this should be number one tbh)
3. Pump efficiency, it seems the industry standard is around 70 to 90% I'm not sure about the coefficients of friction and general mechanical efficiency of their system (I'm not that far into thermodynamics) but regardless its something to consider. And either way this is to capitalize on excess energy, it's not the MOST pressing variable.
4. We've seen in China during covid how efficient construction can be with premanufactured parts, this system leverages such economic principles.
5. Dams have to be custom built due to terrain and construction will be much more difficult and costly because of that and have their own ecological problems, i.e. hoover dam downstream :(. This just needs plenty of flat ground, which America has in excess.
6. Though I'm not a Mormon, I trust their judgment in such matters. www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221212005228/en/NV-Energy-Selects-Energy-Vault-for-440-MWh-Energy-Storage-System-in-Nevada
Is this the end all be all to the problem of inconsistent renewable energy. No. But in certain geographic and ecological conditions nothing in my head is ringing alarms bells, other than the maintenance of the concrete and the mechanical systems themselves. Most of the practical criticisms you levied against the crane don't apply to the skyscraper anyhow.
Tech Sammer: "Hey, using our collective passion for innovation. We have surpassed the current generation, power grid solutions."
Me: "Oh, cool. Do you guys got a demo?"
Tech Scammer: "Yes, of course. Our engineers created this detailed simulation of the project."
Me: "Ah, what software did you use to successfully simulate the complexity of the power grid?"
Tech Scammer: "Uhm... well... Blender... and Adobe Premiere..."
Me: "Well, one is 3D modeling software and the other is a video editing software...."
Me: "So you have nothing?"
Tech Scammer: "Well... we do have this cool video!"
Best way to end the week with some good old quack busting x)
We here in Quebec have such a gravity energy storage system-it is called a dam. Works great!
Me: reads the titles
Me: So a hydro dam but dumber?
Video: a hydro dam but dumber.
Me: Yep.
I haven't gotten to the end yet so forgive me if he covers this, but when a cable or pulley fails and a 20 ton brick falls does it do the same damage as 20 tons of water falling down a pipe into a turbine?
The simple answer is yes,,,,,but you don't get blocks of water "falling" onto a static turbine blade. The 20 tons of water is part of a continuous stream falling onto already rotating blades. Starting the turbine would be a gradual buildup of RPM by regulating the valve. Dynamic condition rather than static.
Same damage!? No..
No, water is more dangerous if it was the only thing falling because it's a small flash flood in the immediate area. The brick would break and there would be some Sharpnel, but the water would push you off your feet and you'd fall on your head.
@Hattie Lankford
Don't you see!?! You will get a Sharpnel!!!
@Hattie Lankford Well, in the water scenario, the water is supposed to be dropping into the turbine anyway. The wrost outcome is that the blades of the turbine are damaged and will have to be fixed.
The brick falling means that the rest of them will fall like Dominos, along with the crane.
Their motto should be "Energy Vault: More complicated and less efficient than traditional pumped storage. Also not economically nor technically viable!"
Years ago I too had the idea for gravity energy storage, so I dusted off my highschool physics and in 15 minutes I realized how stupid of an idea it was. It blows me away that they even wasted their effort making a rendering. But now they even built a full scale proto type? They aren't even doing the scam right. Your supposed to run away with the money not try to build the rediculous thing.
If they just took off witht he money they could be charged with fraud. If they build it and say "we didn't know it wouldn't actually work" then they aren't legally scammers, just failures.
To be honest: I think quiet a few of those "scam companies from kickstarter" start as "visionaire projects" from a design school or mba type student. They probably think they got a good idea that "with enough research" is possible. You could see that pretty clearly with many of those water-extraction devices imo.
Then they start hiring some poor sobs that just got their engineering or physics degree and pretty soon it is clear that this idea was not realised as a product yet because you cannot break some limits. Like energy needed for phase changes. Like engineering challenges for vacuum. Let us be real - we got pretty close to some real physical limits. Transistors will not get much smaller anytime soon. Precision manufacturing got pretty much "good enough for most things" for a remarkable low price.
Many people still have this romantic idea that "if you put enough R&D in a project" it can be realised in a decade. Which was sort of true 30 years ago. But now we got an international connected research exchange. And also the world population doubled twice in the last 100 years and the majority of those don't need to be farmers anymore and got time for ideas. It is just really unlikely that some revolutionary new idea has not been thunk before...
I guess once the money starts rolling in from kick starter they have a steady job until the funds dry up. Perhaps they feel it's their duty to pursue their donators wishes even after they realize it's a bad idea.
@@pulgadog9590 I wonder if you could build a gravity battery on the side of a mountain, so you'd have something steady, no need to build support structure, you'd probably have to try to smooth the angle of the mountain or hill side so it's constant.
@@Albtraum_TDDC That was literally where my thought process went too after realizing how large the system would need to be for any meaningfully grid storage. I then thought of water filled containers to replace the impractical expensive concrete blocks but that's when I realized I was just inventing a crappy version of a hydro electric dam/ pumped storage.
I've worked with some of the largest cranes in the world, lifting and setting up to 1K ton loads. This will not reliably work as shown.
i argue that these bricks actually weigh closer to 72 tonnes. based on the picture shown at 7:20, it looks like its 2 x 3 x 5m. and with a density of 2.4 tonnes/m3. 72 tonnes seems more accurate. concrete is very dense. since its just a picture. i would be conservative and say 60 tonnes though
I work on cranes for a living. It is energy intensive just to lift and lower the hooks. When you start lifting loads the energy you put in is no where near what you can get out by lowing it. There are hybrid cranes that store the hydraulic pressure from lower a load, but they can only use that captured energy to start energy intensive movements.
To be fair, the cranes you work on for a living is designed specifically to lift and lower. Energy capture is the least on their mind.
But still this idea is so ridiculously bunk regardless, because of tons of failure points, a very mechanical setup, wind, variety of other issues like ... temperature expansion and far more.
A crane like this will not last long under continues operation without tons and tons of maintenance... whereas hydro-pumps and for that matter gravity based hydro generators do also require maintenance, but not to the degree of precision mechanics.
I guess you dont get the same energy back from hydro either. Still, Vault has many other problems compared to other technologies.
@@greenanubis No energy storage mechanism gives back what you put in.
And yea that was my point. This has so many issues, so many points of failure it is ridiculous. Their new concept is fucking ridiculous as well. Even more mechanics, even more maintenance.
@@SioxerNikita Yes because companies love to spend more on fuel/electricity than the need to get work done in the same time frame.
Cranes are designed to get the most out of what ever energy source they are designed to use. So if they are doing it as efficient as possible to save as much fuel/electricity and they can't capture the same or more than what is put in, then why makes you think a company that sprung up overnight would have figured out what crane companies that have been around for over a hundred years couldn't. Every large manufacturer of cranes spends millions every year to make their cranes more efficient and use less fuel/electricity.
Now go back and do some research before coming at me with this weak sauce.
@@quazy1328
A) Wtf'ing nerve you got. I do agree with you, trying to make something that reclaims tons of energy is fucking stupid in this manner.
B) Adding additional complexity to your machine simply to get a potential gain back, requiring more specialized people to work them, etc... is not worth the potential money saved... not even close.
Yeah, companies spending millions to make them more energy efficient WHILE making them reliable, making them function under specific stresses, etc... but adding in energy reclamation will inevitably make them LESS reliable. Sometimes money saved does not equate to doing the job quicker, even if you OVERALL spend more money...
C) I never even got close to fucking claiming this company got ANYTHING figured out. They are obviously dumb as fuck, or know they are doing something dumb simply to earn money... Aka... scam....
D) From an actual energy perspective, if you lift up a rock... you can get a certain percentage of the energy back, and frankly a decent amount if you have an efficient system. What this company claims to do might TECHNICALLY work on paper, and even realistically capable of getting a decent amount of the energy back that they put in, but the fact there are tons of better solutions out there is what makes it redundantly stupid...
You could make cars that get the majority of energy back when breaking... that would also introduce a significantly higher mechanical complexity... which would require more maintenance, and more potential points of failure... but who in their right mind would do that?
Some city busses uses heavy fly wheels to spin up and down when accelerating and decelerating, which is something that is actually viable to smack into a personal car... it is also only really efficient if you do a lot of starting and stopping, because... well... you also have an added weight... you also have another issue, your breaking length will become longer, because to actually reclaim that energy you don't want to apply brake discs as your primary source of breaking... which is a trade off...
The whole point here is just because you CAN reclaim the energy... it is often not worth doing it... because when you want do that, there is trade offs...
So please go do your own research before you come at me with your own weak sauce...
More things than one variable is in play here... Apparently the only variable you are thinking is "ENERGY RECLAMATION GUD IF PUSIBLE! DUS COMPS WULD'AVE DONE IT!"... as if there isn't other variables...
I can never tell if the people in these companies believe in their solution or if it is just a way to ensure salary for a few years.
Not just salary. You bait investors and when money stops flowing you cash out and retire in a different country under a different name. It's just that easy. The Theranus lady was too greedy and waited for too long before bailing, which is why she got into trouble that could easily be avoided.
"and I'll give you a clue."
TH-cam ads
Yep, that's about right
I think I spotted a flaw in Thunderfoot's logic.
Clearly those blue blocks are not concrete, that would be ridiculous.
Those are energon cubes, so now it all makes perfect sense :)
Or thorium running not on rails, but solar roadways
That makes it a target for the terrorist group called the Decepticons! The security costs of hiring Autobots to defend the installation would really make it too costly!
@@adarian autobots tss tss it's sounds like they're tesla fanboys or sumthin'
Secret Decepticon plan for storing their energon. Also, It's cannon in the original series that they get drunk off of it.
Would the tower from the concept video collapse by its own weight?
Moreover, water storage systems are used to compensate peaks in the electric system by flushing water from the upper basin into the valley. But with concrete blocks, you can't regain as much energy in such a short time.
You might need to do some kind of reinforcement for the bottom blocks to give them extra strength.
Plus, regular inspections of each block to make sure it isn't damaged and posing a risk of breakage or collapse. Regular movement will inevitably lead to more damage than a stationary structure.
Yes, I'm sure they would build a crane that cannot even handle it's own weight...
Fun fact: Energy Vault's demonstration system in Arbedo-Castione Switzerland is located 69km south of a 1,000MW pumped hydro system. Linth-Limmern stores energy in about 24 million tons of water lifted 600m up by pumping from the lower reservoir.
id be shocked, if this pump & dump scam generated enough energy to run the crane in the middle
I wonder how long it would take for this thing to pay for itself.. or to produce the amount of energy it took to make it, transport it, and put it together.
Infinity... and that's being generous. This is supposed to be green solution but concrete has a massive CO2 cost to produce. It would be worse than nothing.
couple of 1000 of years probably. Wait, rust and degeneration of the steel and everything else will destroy the thing in some few decades at best.
Not to refute anything you said, doctor, but one of the reasons some may be looking for non water gravity storing is that we're running out of water in rivers and lakes as we speak. Y. Arthus-Bertrand spoke on the topic at length in his film "Home".
"Its like these debunkers have not taken a grade schools physics course"
- Its like these "educated tech communicators" have never actually tried to implement their ideas into practice for real.
You saying Linus is educated? Haha - I've been saying for years that guy is a total douche, and finally people are getting it
It was the other way around, that the debunkers assume that all these people working on the project haven't even taken a grade 11 physics course. Which I understand makes sense intuitively, because why would it be possible to hire a bunch of engineers and so on if the concept is flawed at the start? Like obviously there's people working on the details on this that has to realize the flawed nature of it, yet the company keeps on going. I suppose it's the standard of not assuming malice, and particularly so when there's "respected" people involved. The implication of debunking something like this or hyperloop is that whomever is at the top of the company makes sure to keep the engineers quiet and keep trying to sell the snake oil knowing _fully well_ that it's not a possible business and is intentionally a scam from that point on.
Very smart people can still be bamboozled. In fact, there are some theories in psychology that explain why smart people do stupid things due to arrogance/overconfidence that Thunderfoot alludes to in this part of the video. Then you get into sunk cost fallacies and it's a whole train ride to scam city as the fast talkers keep the whole thing going. Like a magician who flawlessly covers for his assistant screwing up by taking all of the audience's attention, there are obvious cracks that people just can't see through the flash and showmanship.
I recall oh so many years ago on AOL in the astronomy area some fruitcake pushing "UFO" technology. Repeatedly, we were told it was ready to go, and with enough money, the fruitcake could develop it. I'll give the turdburglar credit for persistence in ignoring the clash there. Why was money needed for development if it were ready to go? It involved something about draining energy from the spin of electrons. Lots of platitudes were offered but no actual math. Apparently math and physics were invented for the sole purpose of suppressing the invention.
Ask a crane company if they can build you an expensive crane? They say of course, after all the're in the business of building cranes! The crane company doesn't care what you use it for as long as they get paid.
Regenerating drives are pretty much standard on most large cranes, so I doubt there has been that much 'engineering' involved in the build of this prototype just reuse of existing components. On the plus side there will be a large second hand construction crane going cheap next year.
I'm pretty sure liebherr will have another nice white rental crane in their fleet once that other fraud Musk is found out. Double win you get them to buy it, then you take it back at a fraction of the price and rent it out for the next 20 years. Woohoo, free money!
It's like trying to watch someone re-invent the wheel... Hey I got a great idea, why don't we pour concrete in the shape of a donut...
In fact, making a concrete donut that is rotating to store energy makes sense. There were buses that used electric motors to transfer energy into a flywheel at stops and the flywheel released that energy back allowing the bus to reach the next stop. If these folks had built a huge concrete flywheel, that would be much easier, I guess, than stacking blocks. Also, they could sell tickets to ride on this wheel (they would need to add some decorations, though).
Mmmm extra firm donut
It would make more sense to build it on the side of a sheer cliff having 1 or two elevators, with an “ammo magazine” top and bottom. As to eliminate the need for precise stacking.
Pick it up off a belt, put it onto a belt, pull them out and drop them to the lower belts when needed.
The problem is that it’s still pointless compared to pumped hydro, even even with the best of optimizations.
Hey Thunderf00t, love the videos. It’s nice hearing someone with an actual brain talk about this stuff. My only request, could you turn up the volume on your videos. I watch them on my tv and they’re always kinda quiet. I have to crank up the volume so when an ad break hits it blows my ear drums out! lol Thanks
What are these "ad breaks" of which you speak?
I agree, his verbal audio is too low.
not even the ad breaks, the clips from other videos have a similar problem.
Don't get TH-cam Pro, you will never go back...
Ditch your “smart” tv. Buy an used laptop or even a raspberry pi. Use it as a tv. Install an adblock.
Finally, we have an answer to the age old question; "what happens if you give millions of dollars to someone who has never played Jenga?".
I like how the AD on the web page at 1:20 is for pure water from the air!
The stacking alignment issue could be easily taken care of with self-alignment profiles.
If you were foolish enough to do something like this pipe dream at all though, you'd build a structure to hold the blocks at a higher point - you wouldn't stack blocks on blocks where the bottom tier has zero potential energy and so on. Or you increase the mass, reduce the height you raise - to that end, perhaps a solid guided deck rather than individual blocks, raised incrementally on many timed short stroke screw jacks and long stroke hydraulic linear actuators for the journey down, running hydraulic motors connected to the generators.
But all in all, it's only going to result in very expensive electricity. Hydro water storage is a much smarter move.
hell, converting water to hydrogen, storing it, and then burning it when on demand power is needed in closed system would be a better system than the drop weight system, since that doesn't scale up well at all from the original implementation of such a system: using it to power a single light bulb.
That's a whole lot of BS talk, telling me you are still wet behind the ears. Show your work next time. 'Self alignment profiles' my ass. Design something that stacks without friction losses, that won't chip away, that is inexpensive to build. You can go back to playing with your wood blocks now, son.
@@horrido666 I give your trolling attempt a 2/10, son. Must try harder.
Whenever you see a video with synthesizer violins and cellos playing a chirpy tune, while someone tells you they have 'vision', 'passion' and 'dedication', you know it's a scam.
What got me the second I saw the system was the bottom rows... after about a two thirds the way down it seems like your "storage blocks" are lower than the outer ring. Meaning the bottom few layers are completely useless in the inner ring because if you lift them out to stack them you'd burn energy not release it.
I have never been more excited to see a notification in my life.
Why is that?
Right in the opening buzzword video they nearly told the truth.
"Energy vault gravity-based energy storage a design to power our lives and to enable a renewable world."
It should have read.
"Energy vault gravity-based energy storage a design to power our lies and to enable a renewable stock price."
I have a sudden and strong desire to launch little green people into space.
And that is how it got to 2 bi,by targeting the most tech and science illiterate crowd in the world;green activists.The sooner we make the public realize renewables are a scam the better.
@@naamadossantossilva4736 they never will because they want perfect solution for the problem and will believe anyone who tells them what they want to hear, despite the evidence
you know I was considering an household gravity energy storage something like an elevator shaft to store idk solar panel energy. then I did the calc and 1 ton of concrete (less than a cubit meter, reasonable for a shaft) will store the daily energy need of one houseold if the the shaft is 10 Km tall! (or again 33m shaft for bringing one liter of room temeperature water to boil). The orders of magnitude are so much stacked against this
Yep, anyone sane enough to do a few lines of math would discard this idea just in the middle of calculations, realising this is few orders of magnitude off from viable solution.
I was thinking maybe use more concrete, but it seems it would be best to just raise the whole building up with a crane, personally I think that's a revolutionary ingenious idea.
@@Apodeipnon No you are terribly wrong. if you do the maths, if you want to store say 25% of the daily energy used by an household you need 144MJ. Say you use the Burj Khalifa, tallesest building in the world with 830m you need 17 ton of concrete. you need 7 cubic meter of concrete and that's a lot. For 25% of one family. Having access to the tallest building in the world. It's a stupid idea and the order of maginitude are against this
@@SquashyPan haha I was joking about it being ingenious and revolutionary. Lifting a whole house into the air was just funny to me.
@@Apodeipnon sorry for misreading your sarcasm, but i have to admit that people have even crazier ideas and they pretend to be right
I love these people reinventing tech that's been around for decades and making it worse