China built a 40-story tower that stores wind power by stacking concrete

Energy Vault, a Swiss company that's spent years perfecting an unconventional power storage system, has just completed a tower standing one hundred forty-eight meters tall in Rudong, Jiangsu, China. The tower works by using excess electricity from a nearby wind farm to stack heavy concrete blocks vertically. When power is needed, the blocks are released to fall, converting the gravitational potential energy back into electricity. It's mechanical energy storage on a massive scale. According to Boing Boing, the company faced skepticism early on—the publication covered doubters back in twenty twenty-one—but this installation now proves the concept works at commercial scale.

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