Gravitricity Weighs Up One Of Europe’s Deepest Mines
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Engineer.
This is the sub-heading.
Scotland’s Gravitricity is set to deploy its underground energy storage technology at Pyhäsalmi Mine in central Finland, Europe’s deepest zinc and copper mine.
These two paragraphs outline the scheme.
Located about 450km north of the Finnish capital Helsinki, the Pyhäsalmi Mine extends 1,444m below the Earth. With mine operations at Pyhäsalmi winding down, the local community set up a development company to explore redevelopment projects around the mine’s infrastructure, including energy storage.
Gravitricity is set to deploy its GraviStore energy storage technology in a 530m deep auxiliary shaft. GraviStore can utilise off-peak electricity by raising heavy weights in the mine shaft, releasing the energy back on to the grid during high demand by lowering the weights. It’s claimed the 2MW scheme at Pyhäsalmi will provide grid balancing services to the Finnish network.
There is also this quote from Martin Wright,who is Gravitricity’s executive chairman.
This project will demonstrate at full scale how our technology can offer reliable long life energy storage that can capture and store energy during periods of low demand and release it rapidly when required.
This full-scale project will provide a pathway to other commercial projects and allow our solution to be embedded into mine decommissioning activities, offering a potential future for mines approaching the end of their original service life.
Can it be that Gravitricity is finally on its way?
The Anonymous Widower 
Given all the money UK govt is chucking at hydrogen you would have thought they would also be looking at alternatives that can deploy mission proved technology to old coal mine shafts
Comment by nickrl | February 6, 2024 |
Gravitricity have had an appropriate share of Government money, as have Cheesecake Energy, Highview Power and Rheenergise. Gravitricity and Highview Power have also been courted by the likes of ABB, Orsted and Sumitomo.
All the ideas are sound, use readily available technology and probably need just one big serious order.
Comment by AnonW | February 6, 2024 |