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Finland’s radical answer to renewable energy’s biggest headache: The world’s largest sand battery (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 1 week ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/news@beehaw.org

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A small town in southern Finland has turned to the world’s largest commercial sand battery to fix what many see as the most critical problem facing renewable energy: intermittency.

Standing at 13 meters tall and 15 meters wide, the eye-catching facility uses 2,000 metric tons of crushed soapstone to store clean energy in the form of heat to provide 100 megawatt-hours of thermal energy.

That’s enough to provide the 5,000 residents of Pornainen with nearly one month of heat demand through the summer — and roughly one week of demand in the winter.

Commissioned by Finnish district heating company Loviisan Lämpö and developed by Polar Night Energy, the giant sand battery launched last year as part of a push to introduce a flexible heat production technology and reduce carbon emissions generated by the local district heating network.

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[–] sage@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 5 days ago

Why not sodium?

I've heard about so many grid storage solutions, from iron to sand apparently, but why not sodium?

[–] remington@beehaw.org 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Whoever has been paying attention to renewables knows that much better energy storage would help to solve intermittency. Personally, I've been fascinated with all the R&D being done in this field.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago

Canada had the Drake Landing community heated with sand heat storage, in North Alberta in 2012. 97% solar efficient year around. 52 houses.

But it's Alberta, so no one wanted to pay for the maintenance and they ripped it all out and heat with gas now.