While the size of large renewable installations is increasing towards Gigawatt scale, correspondingly the demand for large-scale storage is growing globally. In USA, China, India and in the Middle East large-scale PV-plants beyond 1 GW-size are under construction. The groundbreaking message: Photovoltaic goes big! So, energy storage has to follow.
There are many studies and forecasts about the demand of storage in mid-term future. It will be huge! Just google it. But let´s have a look to the long-term demand: Once most of the global power will be sources by photovoltaic and wind, we will need a storage capacity of roughly the volume of one day´s demand for electricity. It takes roughly the double of a daily production to ensure supply after sunset.
Based on today’s electricity consumption, this will be 60.000 GWh per year. Even, if increasing power demand is not included, it illustrates the dimension of long-term demand for bulk storage. To cover only 5 % of this demand, it takes 375 Gravity Storage plants with a capacity of 8 GWh each.
To be built cost-wise, Gravity Storage needs a solid geology as a prerequisite. That´s why our business model doesn´t overlap with neither pumped hydro storage (which needs elevation – Gravity Storage does not) nor with compressed air storage (because they need cavern and fissured rock).
We commissioned a report on how much of the earth´s surface is suitable for building a Gravity Storage. The result is, that in almost all regions in the world, you will find sub-regions with a suitable geology in general. In 3 % of all examined regions, the conditions seem to be very good, in 43% they are good enough.
The most likely markets for Gravity Storage are regions, where photovoltaic has the potential to source large proportions of the energy demand in the future. USA, Middle East and Northern Africa, China, India and Australia are the core markets of Gravity Storage. But also, Europe need new bulk storage solutions, especially for off-shore wind production around the North Sea.
