While every day more renewable energy is added to today’s power grids, the instability of the grids increases day by day as well. This instability is mitigated by frequency response applications. Gravitricity is based on a simple principle: raising and lowering a heavy weight in a deep mineshaft to store and release energy.
Huisman has been performing full electric lifting and lowering of large loads since 1984 and uses various solutions to stabilise the power system of offshore vessels (basically stabilising the power grid). Gravitricity and Huisman share the ambition to further develop this principle for land grids into a step changing solution. Read more: www.gravitricity.com
250kW demonstrator
The 250kW energy storage demonstrator has been installed in Edingburgh in 2020. The system will demonstrate the Gravitricity working principle and will also confirm commercially important output characteristics and grid compatibility.
After successful testing, a full scale prototype will be installed in a European mineshaft by 2022.