Gravity Block Energy Storage

Grid Mode

Parameters

Block mass 20 t

Motor / generator power 2.0 MW

Round-trip efficiency 80%

Storage State

State of charge: 0%0 / 16 blocks

Stored energy

0.00 MWh

Power flow

0.0 MW

Capacity (full stack)

0.00 MWh

How it works

A gravity storage tower banks electricity as the gravitational potential energy of stacked concrete blocks — the same principle as pumped hydro, but using solid mass and a crane instead of water and a reservoir:

E = m · g · h
Charging:   P_grid = m·g·Δh / (η · t)   (extra energy lost lifting)
Discharging: P_grid = m·g·Δh · η / t   (only a fraction recovered)

Each block sits on one of 16 layers of a growing column. Lifting a block onto layer i raises it by h = i·3 m, so higher layers store more energy per block — the state-of-charge bar is therefore not linear in block count, it follows the actual stacked potential energy.

Charge — the crane hoists blocks one at a time from the ground yard onto the top of the stack, drawing rated motor power from the grid until the tower is full.
Discharge — the crane lowers blocks from the top of the stack back to the yard; the descent drives the motor as a generator, feeding rated power back to the grid.
Block mass / motor power / efficiency — heavier blocks and a more powerful motor move faster per real-world watt; efficiency sets how much of the lifted energy is actually recoverable on the way back down.

Real-world relevance: this is the operating principle behind commercial gravity-storage systems such as Energy Vault's crane towers — a long-duration, non-chemical alternative to lithium-ion batteries for grid balancing.

Concrete block Stacked (charged) Crane tower

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