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Our Hills Are About to Become Giant Batteries
A solution to the uphill battle to meet the world’s energy needs
The world is facing a stored energy shortage. According to the International Energy Agency, the world needs to produce 10,000 gigawatt-hours of batteries and other forms of energy storage by 2040 — that’s a 50-fold increase on today’s current output — or risk being unable to capture much of the energy produced by renewable sources. Stored energy is critical during shortages, like those caused by natural disasters.
For over a hundred years, hydroelectric dams provided much of this stored energy — energy captured at one time and stored in the grid to be used at a later point. There are hundreds of thousands of dams worldwide, with over 80,000 in the United States alone. The problem is that most are not used to produce energy, and they cause a whole host of environmental issues: They disrupt river ecosystems, cause mass displacement and flooding when they burst or break, lower oxygen levels in the water, and use a disproportionately large area of land compared to the energy they produce. Furthermore, there are very few suitable locations left to build new ones.
It’s clear that dams can no longer be the solution to our increasing energy demands. RheEnergise, a London-based startup, is proposing an alternative: a low-cost, energy-efficient, and environmentally friendly energy storage system it’s calling “High-Density Hydro.”
Based on the premise that “most potential sites have been used up, and most people consider pumped hydro a dead end,” the company has designed a solution that doesn’t need masses of land. Instead, its system can be built into hillsides.
High-Density Hydro functions similarly to hydroelectric plants, which generate energy from water as it flows from a dam through turbines. When electricity prices are low (low demand), the system uses surplus power to pump a special type of liquid uphill to storage tanks buried at the top. When prices are higher (high demand), it releases the liquid back down the hill through turbines to generate electricity and supply power to the grid. In short, the startup is looking to turn hills into giant energy batteries; a rechargeable store of energy that the power grid can tap into when it’s…
