Public Funding for Gravitricity Limited

Gravitricity is a novel technology to store energy by raising and lowering the weights inside a shaft. The design is based on an innovative combination of tensioned wires and a winch structure. This provides stability, performance and cost advantages. Gravitricity systems can generate up to 20MW of power, with durations of several hours. An evaluation by Imperial College London, accounting for Gravitricity's longevity (10-50x higher cycle life than batteries), shows that Gravitricity is more cost effective than other forms of electrical energy storage. This lifetime direct cost saving will enable local and regional grids in South Asia to accept higher proportions of renewable electricity. The target markets for this project are India and Pakistan. Electricity demand is expected to treble between now and 2040\. Currently 73% of electricity is coal sourced in India, and 56% of electricity in Pakistan is fossil fuel sourced, from coal, gas and oil fuels. Cost effective energy storage enables higher penetration of wind and solar power on the grid. The Indian government has the target to have installed over 500GW of solar and wind power by 2030, up from 100GW in 2021\. The uptake of solar is driven in part by its very low cost, reaching 2 pence/kWh. As the share of renewables rises, this can cause frequency and voltage disturbances due to mismatch of load demand and generation. Gravitricity is well suited to grid balancing and rapid frequency response services. This feasibility project will combine Gravitricity's technology with Panitek Power's expertise in bringing sustainable energy solutions to the South Asian market. It will develop a South Asia specific solution of the technology to address this market. This is through identifying technical, regulatory and market requirements, and then engineering an optimized solution. In parallel, there will be an evaluation of local supply chains to adapt to local requirements and improve cost effectiveness. Future project partners and potential sites will also be identified to form a proposal for a follow-on demonstrator project.

Panitek Power has offices in the UK, India and Switzerland, and it partners with SMEs from across Europe to help them enter new international markets. It has expertise in Electrical, Smart Grid and Green Hydrogen technologies, which it combines with novel business models, to address local market needs. Examples include the launch of a lithium-ion battery product by a Swiss company in India, and the development of electric vehicle chargers for the Indian market. Gravitricity has developed technology to store energy by raising and lowering weights inside a shaft. The innovation is in the design of a combination of tensioned wires and a winch structure and novel electrically driven winch-drive modules. Gravitricity systems can generate up to 20MW of power, with durations of up to several hours. The World Bank estimates India's electricity demand to treble between now and 2040\. As recently as 2015, coal accounted for 75% of electricity generation in India. Much of the new generation capacity will come from renewables, and the Indian government has the target to install over 450GW of solar and wind power by 2030\. This will reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and also improve air quality in major cities. To enable the grid to accommodate this intermittent renewable electricity, energy storage systems such as Gravitricity are needed. An evaluation by Imperial College London, shows that the Gravitricity is more cost effective than other forms of electrical energy storage such as lithium-ion batteries. Gravitricity's longevity (10-50x higher cycle life than batteries) and versatility make it particularly well suited for developing countries. This will allow for an increase in the penetration level of renewable energy in the Indian grid, with higher reliability of power, and at a lower cost. This feasibility project will explore options for collaboration and innovation with potential customers and suppliers in India, for gravity based electrical energy storage.

Gravitricity is an IP rich UK SME in the cleantech sector with 4 patents and 3 further patent applications relating to its innovative energy storage technology. This project supports the initial phase of its expansion to Chile, where it is believed conditions are suitable for high and fast growing customer demand and low cost implementation. The project is a 3 month feasibility study led by Gravitricity as sole partner with a single subcontractor (Fower Group). A research and innovation relationship will be established with the Fower Group, specialist in bringing new technology to the mining sector in Chile, Peru and Ecuador. Gravitricity's technology stores energy by raising and lowering weights in a vertical underground shaft. Novel electrically driven winch-drive modules are being developed. Each unit can be configured to produce between 1 and 20MW peak power, with output duration from 15 minutes to eight hours. Mining represents over 40% of Chilean GDP and this project will identify the availability and abundance of disused mine shafts. The identification of an abundance of mine shafts would give a significant cost advantage to future Gravitricity technical implementations in the region. The project will engage with Chilean government departments and agencies, Mining and Renewable Energy Associations as well as interviewing end-users at mines known to have involvement with the creation and maintenance of shafts. This will speed up commercialisation in a market which expects to more than double its renewable energy output by 2030\. The objective of the study is to fast-track Gravitricity's commercialisation in the region. Internationalisation is a key plank of the company's overall growth strategy, and Chile has been identified as having good conditions for the company's first foray into the Americas. Mines are large energy users and many mining companies are transitioning to renewable power with some Chilean mines going as far as 100% renewables. Energy storage is a key enabler of this transition and gravitricity is uniquely placed to rehabilitate and reuse the disused assets of the mining sector (ie. mine shafts) to put them back into productive service.

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"Gravitricty Ltd is developing a mechanical technology using gravitational potential for grid-connected electrical energy storage. The scale is currently around 1MW with potential for up to 20MW peak power, and energy storage from 250kWh to 10MWh per cycle. Combination with CAES, using the same vertical shaft as a pressure vessel, could increase the energy stored threefold. The technology has major advantages including rapid response (<1s to full power), high energy efficiency (75-85% round-trip efficiency), very long lifetime (50 Yrs+ for major components) with no cyclic degradation, and locational flexibility. During this 12 month project Gravitricity will work with heavy-lift experts Davy Markham and Deeptek to: A) develop detailed designs for cost reduction in future commercial projects (both in existing mineshafts and in purpose sunk shafts); B) test modular components of the Gravitricity system under gravity and under mock-grid conditions at the Power Networks Demonstration Centre; and C) identify sites and begin environmental and geophysical assessment of sites for our full-scale prototype project, which will be built in 2019 or 2020\."

Gravitricity Ltd is an energy storage technology company based in Edinburgh. The Company is developing an innovative mechanical energy storage technology for grid-scale electricity storage. This project, consisting of follow-up work after the June 2017 Clean&Cool Mission, will enable Gravitricity to make progress in three core areas of commercial strategy: - Market Analysis and Assessment (including data and evidence for the Business Plan that will be used for Seed Funding raise in late 2017.) - Industrial Consortium Building, primarily via one trip to continental Europe. - North American Partner identification and meetings, primarily via one trip to the USA.

This is a proposal to develop a novel technology based on a combination of using gravity and compressed air for grid-connected electrical energy storage at a scale from 100kW to 50MW peak power and from 250kWh to 10MWh energy per cycle. This will fill a technology gap between small-scale relatively short-life storage devices like flywheels and batteries, and inherently large scale systems like pumped storage. It also has major advantages including rapid response (<2s to full power) and high energy efficiency (>90% round-trip efficiency) with no cyclic deterioration (performance is not affected by number of storage cycles or by part-loading). The project will include engineering work to develop all aspects of the technology (including a methodology to vertically drill holes up to a km deep and 5m in diameter) alongside parallel commercial work to ensure the technical offering will suit the emerging demand for energy storage on power grids. The project will output fully costed plans for a proof-of-concept prototype deployment to be deployed within 3-5 years.

Gravitricity is a start-up R&D company developing new technology for the storage of electrical energy from the national grid and for producing electricity on demand at short notice from storage. The basic principle is to use a large mass, of hundreds or even thousands of tons, which can be lowered down a vertical shaft (possibly a former mine-shaft) and in so doing will drive a motor-generator unit to produce electricity into the grid. Then at times when electricity is plentiful and low in cost it will use this power to raise the weight back to the top of the shaft ready for the next time there is a demand for power. Gravitricity has recently made a patent application GB1111535.9 which focusses on how the heavy weight may be raised and lowered and how to control its movement and prevent it from swinging and damaging the shaft through using tightly tensioned guide wires stretched between the base of the shaft and the surface. Because many disused mine shafts are flooded and it would not be economical to pump out the water, the patent covers techniques for lowering the weight into a flooded shaft. It also covers how the essential guide wires may be installed from the surface without any need to send personnel down the shaft. This proposal is to cover work needed to confirm the market for this technology (to help stabilise grids with a high proportion of variable input such as wind generated electricity) and to assess the economics of the proposed technology. The main objective will be to develop a detail Business Plan to enable the technology to be financed and taken forward.