this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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these are neat. the energy density of them is very low compared to batteries, and concrete is a pretty high emissions material to construct (and you need a lot of it for this kind of thing). article says they're using recycled concrete for the blocks though. hopefully learnings from this will help flesh out cases where it's a better move over batteries or pumped hydro
I enjoy using these in timberborn too
I was reading earlier today about how china's solar sector is outpacing their battery production, so that's why this exists, bad battery is better than no battery
All my winning can't keep pace with all my other winning
I imagine low energy density doesn't really matter in this use case, and using recycled concrete has to be incredibly cheap compared to producing efficient batteries.
yeah if you've got the space, energy density isn't so important. I'm sure the recycled concrete is used in the blocks that are lifted and those are surely cheap, but there's also a lot of structural steel/concrete in the building itself (you need a legit structure to hold up all that mass) and there are also the cranes and associated moving parts to consider. the heavy ballast is probably the cheapest part of the whole thing.
Sure, but I'm sure amortizing that over 35 year lifetime comes out to peanuts, especially given how ironed out construction in China is.