The next world’s tallest building could be a 3,000-feet-high battery

Tall buildings have always been seen as monuments to human's building achievements. Today the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, stands more than 828 meters (2,700 feet) in height and is a most impressive feat of construction.

But records are made to be broken, and somewhere some architect and construction company is planning to build a skyscraper even taller! And as impressive as that may be, using that building for renewable energy storage might actually be it's more impressive feature. 

The “Battery Skyscraper” technology uses a motor powered by electricity from the grid to elevate giant blocks when energy demand is low. These blocks would store the electricity as “potential” energy. When there is demand, the blocks would be lowered, releasing the energy, which would be converted into electricity. 

The tower, which could range from 300 to 1,000 meters (985 to 3,300 feet) in height, would have hollowed out structures resembling elevator shafts for moving the blocks, leaving room for residential and commercial tenants. Ultimately, multi-gigawatts-hours of energy could be stored, which is enough to power several buildings.

Of course, this type of new technology will require a significant amount of testing to ensure that it will work as intended, and be safe for use. And that's where Intertek comes in. 

Intertek offers Total Quality Assurance in battery testing and certification services, ensuring energy storage technologies meet performance, reliability and safety criteria, and tests batteries of all sizes from the tiny button cells for hearing aids to giant batteries used in electric vehicles and grid storage. 

And for a project of this size, Intertek's Building and Construction division is a suite of Intertek brands that are industry leaders across multiple architecture, engineering and construction disciplines, developing the most innovative product and project solutions.

If the world wants to reach net zero by 2050, grid-scale storage, or technologies connected to the power grid that can store energy and deploy it when needed, will need to be ramped up and take the form of multiple disciplines (such as solar, wind, hydro and others). It's amazing to think that we may soon add skyscrapers to the mix of renewable energy sources!