Unfortunately we have many many dams/reservoirs in poor condition in this country along with other aging infrastructure IE roads and out power distribution network.

Big dirt work projects are extremely expensive so they tend to wait till it fails or almost fails before fixing it... Heavy equipment operating costs and the massive cost of the environmental paper work are a killer. Few realize how much of the cost of construction these days is the environmental impact study alone.

Here is another article on gravity storage. It goes over the few companies working on it. Interesting ideas!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/bat...ential-in-2021

That one has already been through the debunking ringer. It's another solar road scam. The science is clear it isn't feasible. It works but the return is so low making it extremely inefficient and it can't be made better.

Pumped Hydro is the only thing that works but building them is extremely costly and there are few places that they can be done and when it can the environmentalists make it nearly impossible to build unless they get their payoff.

Yeah, saw this a few years ago. Neat concept but my initial thought is that there's no way this can output enough energy to really be worth it.

The same power to weight ratio numbers apply to wave power.
Sailing our yacht at night with only the stars and compass to entertain one, used to wonder about using wave power to generate electricity, and as an even more direct use, to operate the pumps for desalination of sea water. In those day I could do the calcs in my head, not so much any more.
A seven ton yacht, up and down a wave X ft high every Y seconds.
If is pretty tough to beat batteries for economy as battery prices fall each year.

Looking at the project with cranes and concrete blocks got me thinking about... cranes. The ones in ports and other transfer depots. Real, working cranes, which to not lift thousands of tons to great heights, but instead lift thousands of cargo containers daily.

Do those cranes use regenerative braking when lowering cargo? How much energy do they use to pick up, move and lower a single container? And how much of that energy is recoverable?

Maybe not for storing grid power, but those cranes could have a flywheel, so that the energy from lowering one container could cover the lifting of the next.
But then, when not in use, those flywheels could help the grid...

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Check this one out.

It’s actually being built.

https://aresnorthamerica.com/


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That is pretty cool.

Definitely another cool idea. Man that's a lot of weight, 320 tons per cart!

I got this idea about small scale pumped hydro yesterday.
Instead of pumping water above the surface to store energy, why not pump it to the surface?
I'm thinking about a well, and wells can be tens or even 100 meters deep, so that gives quite a bit of head. On the surface would be a pond.

Of course, not good for all locations, since the well would have to be able to accept the amount of water that will be dropped while generating electricity.

Add a windmill that pumps water directly (like in old farms).

What do you think?

Edit: A quick search found this
Pumped Storage: Using Water Towers, Aquifer Well Pumps to Generate Energy During Peak Demand Periods