Incredible plan for world’s tallest skyscraper three times bigger than The Shard that is designed to be ‘giant battery’

THIS is the unbelievable plan for the world’s tallest skyscraper that’s a whopping three times bigger than The Shard and is designed to be a “giant battery”.

The architecture firm behind iconic structures like the Burj Khalifa and One World Trade Center have teamed up with an energy giant to turn the unbelievable concept into a reality.

SOM/Energy Vault

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has collaborated with Energy Vault to create design[/caption]

SOM/Energy Vault

The skyscraper would use an electricity-powered motor to lift giant blocks into the air[/caption]

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the architecture and engineer firm behind various iconic buildings worldwide, have announced a partnership with energy storage company Energy Vault.

They look to develop new gravity energy storage solutions, like the incredible design for a futuristic skyscraper.

The mega-building would use an electricity-powered motor to lift giant blocks into the air when electricity demand is low.

These elevator-like blocks would then store the electricity as “potential” energy.

But when the city’s energy needs increasing, the blocks would be lowered, transforming the energy back into electricity.

The super-tower could reach incredible heights of up to a whopping 3,300ft and would house residents and have commercial spaces.

A big struggle with producing clean energy currently is the often unreliable ways of sourcing it.

Currently the issues range from cloudy days when solar energy is needed, or turbines having nothing to generate power due to poor wind.

Storage is therefore crucial for balancing generation and consumption, CNN reports.

To successfully meet net zero targets by 2050, tech connected to the power grid that can store and distribute energy when necessary needs expanding, says the International Energy Association.

The firm are also looking to explore the futuristic use of pumped storage hydropower in skyscrapers, potentially replacing the designed blocks with water.

Pumped storage hydropower works by a turbine pumping water from a reservoir on lower ground to one on higher ground during off-peak hours.

But when demand goes up, the water is released to flow through an electricity-generated turbine.

This incredible setup could store enough energy to power numerous buildings with multi-gigawatt-hour capacity.

Energy Vault have already proved the concept could work as they’ve successfully built a 492ft energy-storing mega-structure in China.

Enabling the use of renewable energy would help offset the carbon footprint of giant skyscrapers.

Today, the buildings and construction sector is responsible for almost 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the UN reports.

CEO of Energy Vault Robert Piconi told CNN: “If you’re going high in a superstructure anyway, we’re just piggybacking on that.”

How does gravity power work?

The gravity power method involves lifting an object, in this case a block, to a height before then dropping it.

By dropping it, the energy can transform into electricity.

The electrical energy used to lift the block is stored in the form of potential energy which then miraculously transforms into kinetic energy, according to Enel.

SOM/Energy Vault

When the blocks would be lowered the energy would transform back into electricity[/caption]