Why China is building a giant battery the size of a building ?

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With more than 20 million electrified cars in circulation in the country, China is the queen of the field. It's quite simple, the country dominates the entire planet. As noted in this article from Automobile Propre: “ In August 2023, 61 % of electrified vehicles sold throughout the world were sold on the Chinese market ”. To power this monumental fleet, the country has just completed the construction in December 2023 of a monumental battery.

In partnership with Energy Vault, this project, called “Rudong EVx” is a truly daring solution for the storage and distribution of electricity for EVs.

A technology built on gravity

The principle of this battery is simple, but rather ingenious. Inside this huge battery are concrete blocks. These are raised to a certain height and then lowered when the network needs power. This then activates generators which convert the potential energy of gravity, accumulated during the elevation of the blocks, into electrical energy which can be subsequently reinjected into the network when demand is high.

This technique can be compared to that of a hydroelectric dam, but the water is replaced here by gravity and concrete blocks. This battery, built in the east of the country, offers a fairly large storage capacity of 100 MWh. To better imagine what this represents, it would be equivalent to the average production of 30 to 50 wind turbines over a year.

© Energy Vault/Rudong EVx

Towards a greener China ?

In recent years, the country < strong>invests more in sustainable energy, like these rain-voltaic panels. China's ambitions do not stop there; in fact, several other installations of the same type are planned across the country.

If the idea of ​​storing electricity using gravity is already an innovative solution, from the point of view of the design of these installations, here too, the country proves that it does not #8217;has nothing to envy of others. Built from recycled materials, these infrastructures are also entirely modular. This allows both to optimize construction costs, but also to facilitate their implementation.

Today, China still remains the country emitting the most CO2 in the world, with 32.9% of total emissions, according to Statista. A state of affairs which can be explained in particular by a very significant dependence on coal and by massive exports of goods to the whole world. However, greener initiatives have emerged more and more frequently over the past ten years in China. This new project is concrete proof.

• China has just completed the Rudong EVx project in partnership with a Swiss company, Energy Vault.
• This project is a giant battery, storing and redistributing energy. #8217;energy on the network thanks to gravity.
• It is the first in a series of other installations of the same type, which will mainly be used to power the numerous EVs in circulation in the country.

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