Who is Green Gravity and can they revolutionise renewable energy?
Founder Mark Swinnerton tells Illawarra business leaders "yes" and it can be based out of Wollongong.
It’s not yet commercially ready, but Green Gravity founder Mark Swinnerton told business leaders in Wollongong how his revolutionary approach to energy storage is already attracting significant investment from around the world.
During The Illawarra Connection dinner on Tuesday, February 4, Swinnerton outlined his vision for how the Illawarra will play a crucial role in reusing old mine shafts to take a piece of the estimated $2 trillion energy storage market.
Swinnerton said Green Gravity was already in talks with six countries and has an agreement in place with a state-owned coal mine in the Jiu Valley in Transylvania, Romania.
Closer to home, an agreement is in place with Wollongong Resources, which has mines in Russell Vale and Wongawilli, and with Glencore, a copper mine in Mount Isa.
“We announced in December that we entered an immediate feasibility with Glencore to be able to produce a gigawatt-hour storage facility and uh to put as many as 400 jobs into Mount Isa this year.”
Swinnerton detailed how Green Gravity's technology leverages the simple yet powerful force of gravity to store and release energy.
He described in simple terms how, by using heavy weights that are lifted and lowered within decommissioned mine shafts, the system can efficiently manage energy supply and demand without relying on lithium batteries.
It’s a system his team has been testing at their GravityLab in Port Kembla - a 12-metre-high prototype.
He told business leaders the lab had to be based in the Illawarra because simply they couldn’t find another building tall enough.
“It's actually one of the biggest tallest ceilings in Australia. We're really proud we partner with BlueScope for this facility. We couldn't have gone to Brisbane or Sydney, we couldn't find any buildings that had the specs that we needed. We did have them in the area,” he said.
He further explained that as renewable energy sources like wind and solar become more prevalent, the need for reliable and scalable energy storage solutions is critical.
Green Gravity's technology addresses this challenge by offering a method of storing excess energy during periods of low demand and releasing it when consumption peaks - something that is essential for maintaining grid stability and ensuring a consistent energy supply in a future dominated by renewables.
Swinnerton explained there were 96,000 decommissioned mines in Australia. Most are still connected to the grid.
“So not only is it a travesty we've got these big blocks of land often in the near urban areas doing nothing. Unrehabilitated. They're connected to the electricity grid. At a time when it's taking three years to connect something to the grid. When we can't get renewables in and we can't connect load to the grid because of congestion,” he said.
He said the Illawarra was central to Green Gravity with its rich industrial heritage, skilled workforce, and existing infrastructure making it an ideal hub for the technology.
Swinnerton emphasised how the region's unique combination of resources and community support has been instrumental in advancing Green Gravity's initiatives.
“We have based our engineering here, we're basing our product development out here, and we're basing our corporate functions out here. This is where we intend to build the organisation from, but we could also layer manufacturing. We can also layer assembly and many other elements of our business into Wollongong and other places if we can get the conditions to set right. So it's really exciting.”