China just activated the world's first commercial mountain gravity energy storage system in Yunnan Province — raising 36 individual 2,000-tonne concrete weights up 600-meter cliff faces using surplus solar electricity, then releasing them to drive generators during peak demand.

 

China just activated the world's first commercial mountain gravity energy storage system in Yunnan Province — raising 36 individual 2,000-tonne concrete weights up 600-meter cliff faces using surplus solar electricity, then releasing them to drive generators during peak demand.

The Yunnan Gravity Array uses a rack-and-pinion drive embedded into existing cliff faces, requiring no new earthworks beyond anchor installation. Each weight traveling 600 vertical meters stores 3.3 megawatt-hours. All 36 weights together provide 120 megawatt-hours with 60-megawatt discharge for 2 hours — matching a small gas peaking plant profile.

China identified 12,000 kilometers of suitable cliff terrain across Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou capable of hosting gravity storage systems. At 40 yuan per kilowatt-hour manufacturing cost, mountain gravity storage is the least expensive grid storage technology deployed at commercial scale in China today.

Source: China Three Gorges Corporation, Yunnan Provincial Energy Bureau, Chinese National Development and Reform Commission, 2025

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