American studio SOM has partnered with energy storage company Energy Vault to design four schematic sustainable energy storage systems, including integrating the technology into supertall skyscrapers.
SOM worked on four potential systems for Energy Vault's G-Vault gravity-based storage solutions. Two designs feature integration into tall buildings and the other spread out over a landscape.
Called EVu, EVc, EVy, and EV0 each of the four schemes makes use of gravity energy storage systems (GESS), which use the force of gravity to generate electricity by lifting and then dropping a weight.
Both EVu, which is a tower design, and EVy which is incorporated into a natural landscape, use solid weights, while the second EVc tower design and EVo use hydropower. SOM and Energy Vault's EVc is a cylindrical tower that uses pumped hydro energy to generate electricity. EVu pictured above
"When integrated into tall buildings, these systems can maximize sustainability, accelerate carbon payback of building construction, and lower the levelized cost of energy consumption," said SOM.
"They can also bring sustainable energy storage to natural landscapes with minimal environmental impact."
A render of EVu has a tall, slender structure towering over an urban landscape. Its interior technology uses a system of weights that move upwards via a pulley system during low-energy needs, and drop when there is more demand from the surrounding electricity grid to produce power.
The sys...