Edinburgh start-up Gravitricity is teaming up with Dutch lifting specialist Huisman to develop gravity-fed energy storage projects at the sites of disused mines in Scotland.
The partners plan to develop a 250kW demonstration project and test it early next year, and ultimately aim to scale up to 20MW commercial systems.
Huisman will build the test unit in the Netherlands and ship it to Scotland, where it will be tested at the Power Networks Demonstrator Centre in Cumbernauld.
The Gravitricity technology uses a weight of up to 2000 tonnes suspended in mine shafts by cables attached to winches.
The weight is winched to the top of the shaft to capture renewable power and then dropped to release it when needed, with the winches acting as generators.
Gravitricity managing director Charlie Blair (pictured) said: “This 250kW prototype will help us validate our simulations about how the technology works in practice and will give us the opportunity to utilise Huisman’s enormous experience in winches and cranes.
“At the same time Huisman and our engineers will begin detailed design of the winch drive modules for our full-size 4MW demonstrator, which will be deployed in a UK mine shaft in 2020.”
Huisman business development manager Peter Berting said: “Our ambition is to work with Gravitricity to develop an innovative commercial solution which will make a substantial contribution to grid stabilisation and safe future power supply to all its users.”
Gravitricity is also working with Glasgow outfit Industrial Systems and Control on dynamic simulations and control mechanisms for the storage system.
Image: Gravitricity
Huisman weighs into storage
By EBS