02/07/2021
GRAVITY STORAGE.
Before COVID- which now seems like a century ago, I discussed my company's partnership with a Swiss/German startup that that can help Igboland renewable energy hub in Africa. The magic world is affordability. It will reduce the cost of electricity in Igboland by over 50% cheaper than the average cost of electricity in Nigeria today - forcing major industries to relocate to Igboland to reduce production and increase profit - doing exactly what they are doing today.
Buhari and the APC administration are one of the few governments in the world that still charge import duty on solar panels - and Nigeria the largest generator-powered economy on earth, the world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries.
The biggest problem has been how to store the generated energy when the sun is shining and use it when the sun is not shining like at night, early morning, and rainy days. While the price of solar panels has been plummeting the price of storage systems based on technologies like lithium and pump storage is still very high.
Energy Vault has created the world’s only cost-effective, utility-scale gravity-based energy storage system that is not dependent on land topography or specific geology underground.
Compared to incumbent stationary energy storage solutions – most notably chemical batteries – Energy Vault provides a sustainable alternative that does not degrade over the life of the project and has competitive performance with round-trip efficiency between 80 to 90% – all at a significantly lower initial CapEx and levelized cost per kilowatt-hour price point.
EdwinCade Agbugba
CEO BlackWatts