You should not use Thunderf00t as an authority on this. He has no clue what he's talking about. That seems to be a problem in general, he doesn't actually do much research on the topics he talks about. So unless he already has some understanding of the topic, he doesn't provide much insight.
He seems to think Energy Vault is an alternative to pumped hydro, which it is absolutely not. They're not solving the same problem.
Pumped hydro is best suited for regulating power over days/weeks. You do not want to use it to do frequency regulation or regulate power fluctuations over hours/days. In fact, in Norway, where there's a whole lot of hydropower, and now an increasing amount of wind power, they're considering putting battery storage inside hydro power plants. This may seem really stupid until you understand that constantly regulating the output of a hydro power plant up and down wears down all the parts of the power plant much faster, and can cause issues for life in the river downstream. So it actually makes a lot of sense, since the hydro power plant has a good grid connection and may have some spare areas for batteries.
Batteries and solutions like Energy Vault are primarily intended for frequency regulation and short term storage, and that covers most of what's needed to help balance renewables in most areas.
There's a bunch of other serious flaws in his reasoning too, such as thinking that a marketing-material picture of Energy Vault next to wind turbines means that they actually propose putting Energy Vault towers right next to wind turbines, rather than just an illustration that the Energy Vault helps regulate output from renewables.
He seems to think Energy Vault is an alternative to pumped hydro, which it is absolutely not. They're not solving the same problem.
Pumped hydro is best suited for regulating power over days/weeks. You do not want to use it to do frequency regulation or regulate power fluctuations over hours/days. In fact, in Norway, where there's a whole lot of hydropower, and now an increasing amount of wind power, they're considering putting battery storage inside hydro power plants. This may seem really stupid until you understand that constantly regulating the output of a hydro power plant up and down wears down all the parts of the power plant much faster, and can cause issues for life in the river downstream. So it actually makes a lot of sense, since the hydro power plant has a good grid connection and may have some spare areas for batteries.
Batteries and solutions like Energy Vault are primarily intended for frequency regulation and short term storage, and that covers most of what's needed to help balance renewables in most areas.
There's a bunch of other serious flaws in his reasoning too, such as thinking that a marketing-material picture of Energy Vault next to wind turbines means that they actually propose putting Energy Vault towers right next to wind turbines, rather than just an illustration that the Energy Vault helps regulate output from renewables.