![](//www.4rfv.com/images/no_image.jpg)
Mark Swinnerton aims to fight climate change by transforming abandoned mines into storage tanks of renewable energy.
The CEO of startup Green Gravity is prototyping his ambitious vision in a warehouse 60 miles south of Sydney, Australia, and simulating it in NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for building 3D workflows and applications.
The concept requires some heavy lifting. Solar and wind energy will pull steel blocks weighing as much as 30 cars each up shafts taller than a New York skyscraper, storing potential energy that can turn turbines whenever needed.
A Distributed Energy Network Swinnerton believes it's the optimal way to save renewable energy because nearly a million abandoned mine shafts are scattered around the globe, many of them already connected to the grid. And his mechanical system is cheaper and greener than alternatives like massive lithium batteries better suited for electric vehicles.
Mark Swinnerton Officials in Australia, India and the U.S. are interested in the concept, and a state-owned mine operator in Romania is conducting a joint study with Green Gravity.
We have a tremendous opportunity for repurposing a million mines, said Swinnerton, who switched gears after a 20-year career at BHP Group, one of the world's largest mining companies, determined to combat climate change.
A Digital-First Design A longtime acquaintance saw an opportunity to accelerate Swinnerton's efforts with a digital twin.
I was fascinated by the Green Gravity idea and suggested taking a digital-first approach, using data as a differentiator, said Daniel Keys, an IT expert and executive at xAmplify, a provider of accelerated computing services.
AI-powered simulations could speed the design and deployment of the novel concept, said Keys, who met Swinnerton 25 years earlier at one of their first jobs, flipping burgers at a fast-food stand.
Today, they've got a digital prototype cooking on xAmplify's Scaile computer, based on NVIDIA DGX systems. It's already accelerating Green Gravity's proof of concept.
Thanks to what we inferred with a digital twin, we've been able to save 40% of the costs of our physical prototype by shifting from three weights to two and moving them 10 instead of 15 meters vertically, said Swinnerton.
Use Cases Enabled by Omniverse It's the first of many use cases Green Gravity is developing in Omniverse.
Once the prototype is done, the simulation will help scale the design to mines as deep as 7,000 feet, or about six Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. Ultimately, the team will build in Omniverse a dashboard to control and monitor sensor-studded facilities without the safety hazards of sending a person into the mine.
Green Gravity's physical prototype and test lab. We expect to cut tens of millions of dollars off the estimated $100 million for the first site because we can use simulations to lower our risks with banks and insurers, said Swinnerton. That's a real tantalizing opportunity.
Virtual Visualization Tools Operators will track facilities remotely using visualization systems equipped with NVIDIA A40 GPUs and can stream their visuals to tablets thanks to the TabletAR extension in the Omniverse Spatial Framework.
xAmplify's workflow uses a number of software components such as NVIDIA Modulus, a framework for physics-informed machine learning models.
We also use Omniverse as a core integration fabric that lets us connect a half-dozen third-party tools operators and developers need, like Siemens PLM for sensor management and Autodesk for design, Keys said.
Omniverse eases the job of integrating third-party applications into one 3D workflow because it's based on the OpenUSD standard.
Along the way, AI sifts reams of data about the thousands of available mines to select optimal sites, predicting their potential for energy storage. Machine learning will also help optimize designs for each site.
Taken together, it's a digital pathway Swinnerton believes will lead to commercial operations for Green Gravity within the next couple years.
It's the latest customer for xAmplify's Canberra data center serving Australian government agencies, national defense contractors and an expanding set of enterprise users with a full stack of NVIDIA accelerated software.
Learn more about how AI is transforming renewables, including wind farm optimization, solar energy generation and fusion energy.
More from Nvidia
06/09/2024
Customer service departments across industries are facing increased call volumes, high customer service agent turnover, talent shortages and shifting customer e...
05/09/2024
Fall will be here soon, so leaf it to GeForce NOW to bring the games, with 19 joining the cloud in September.
Get started with the seven games available to str...
05/09/2024
The business transformations that generative AI brings come with risks that AI itself can help secure in a kind of flywheel of progress.
Companies who were qui...
04/09/2024
Volvo Cars' new, fully electric EX90 is making its way from the automaker's assembly line in Charleston, South Carolina, to dealerships around the U.S.
...
04/09/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of the AI Decoded series, which demystifies AI by making the technology more accessible, and showcases new hardware, softwa...
04/09/2024
Edward Mehr works where AI meets the anvil. The company he cofounded, Machina L...
04/09/2024
It all started at Berlin's Merantix venture studio in 2022, when Silviu Homo...
29/08/2024
Well before OpenAI upended the technology industry with its release of ChatGPT i...
29/08/2024
It's time to mana-fest the spirit of adventure with Square Enix's highly anticipated action role-playing game, Visions of Mana, launching today in the c...
28/08/2024
As enterprises race to adopt generative AI and bring new services to market, the demands on data center infrastructure have never been greater. Training large l...
28/08/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of the AI Decoded series, which demystifies AI by making the technology more accessible, and showcases new hardware, softwa...
27/08/2024
The initial wave of generative AI was driven by its use in internet services tha...
27/08/2024
Aiming at making the process faster and smarter, NVIDIA on Wednesday released th...
26/08/2024
Nations around the world are pursuing sovereign AI to produce artificial intelligence using their own computing infrastructure, data, workforce and business net...
23/08/2024
A deep technology conference for processor and system architects from industry a...
22/08/2024
Straight out of Gamescom, NVIDIA introduced GeForce NOW support for Xbox automat...
21/08/2024
Snowflake is using AI to help enterprises transform data into insights and applications. In this episode of NVIDIA's AI Podcast, host Noah Kravitz and Baris...
21/08/2024
Developers of generative AI typically face a tradeoff between model size and acc...
21/08/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of the AI Decoded series, which demystifies...
20/08/2024
At Gamescom, the world's biggest gaming expo, NVIDIA has once again pushed t...
20/08/2024
India is home to the globe's second-largest road network, spanning nearly 4 ...
20/08/2024
Picture this: NVIDIA and MediaTek are working together to make the industry's best gaming display technologies more accessible to gamers globally.
The comp...
20/08/2024
NVIDIA's first digital human technology small language model is being demons...
20/08/2024
Each week, GeForce NOW elevates cloud gaming by bringing top PC games and new up...
19/08/2024
As hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather events occur with increased f...
15/08/2024
Time to be wowed: GeForce NOW members can now stream World of Warcraft on suppor...
14/08/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of the AI Decoded series, which demystifies...
13/08/2024
Bringing together the world's brightest minds and the latest accelerated computing technology leads to powerful breakthroughs that help tackle some of the b...
09/08/2024
The State of California today announced a first-of-its-kind AI education initiative with NVIDIA.
The public-private collaboration supports the state's goal...
08/08/2024
Editor's note: This blog was updated on Aug. 9 to reflect changes to the availability of Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks.'
This GFN Thursday marks 2,00...
08/08/2024
Silicon Valley's Figure has taken the wraps off of its next-generation Figur...
07/08/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of the AI Decoded series, which demystifies AI by making the technology more accessible, and showcases new hardware, softwa...
07/08/2024
Techbio is a field combining data, technology and biology to enhance scientific ...
06/08/2024
High school student Selin Alara Ornek is looking ahead - using machine learning and the NVIDIA Jetson platform for edge AI and robotics to create robot guide do...
06/08/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of our In the NVIDIA Studio series, which c...
01/08/2024
Members can choose their own adventure with GeForce NOW bringing 18 new games to the cloud in August - including Square Enix's fantasy role-playing game Vis...
31/07/2024
Enterprises are rapidly adopting generative AI, large language models (LLMs), ad...
31/07/2024
NVIDIA researchers used NVIDIA Edify, a multimodal architecture for visual generative AI, to build a detailed 3D desert landscape within a few minutes in a live...
31/07/2024
In celebration of Zoox's 10th anniversary, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang recently joined the robotaxi company's CEO, Aicha Evans, and its cofounde...
31/07/2024
Editor's note: This post is part of the AI Decoded series, which demystifies...
29/07/2024
Designers and artists have new and improved ways to boost their productivity wit...
29/07/2024
Millions of people already use generative AI to assist in writing and learning. ...
29/07/2024
One of the world's largest AI communities - comprising 4 million developers on the Hugging Face platform - is gaining easy access to NVIDIA-accelerated infe...
29/07/2024
Generative AI is unlocking new ways for enterprises to engage customers through ...
29/07/2024
The world's brands and agencies are using generative AI to create advertising and marketing content, but it doesn't always provide the desired outputs.
...
29/07/2024
NVIDIA announced at SIGGRAPH fVDB, a new deep-learning framework for generating ...
29/07/2024
When The Coca-Cola Company produces thirst-quenching marketing, the creative ele...
29/07/2024
The generative AI revolution - with deep roots in visual computing - is amplifying human creativity even as accelerated computing promises significant gains in ...
29/07/2024
In a highly anticipated fireside chat at SIGGRAPH 2024, NVIDIA founder and CEO J...