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    Finland warms up the world’s largest sand battery, and the economics look appealing
    Futurology

    Finland warms up the world’s largest sand battery, and the economics look appealing

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    1. nimicdoareu on

      It doesn’t look like much, but Finland recently flipped the switch on the world’s largest sand-based battery.

      Yes, sand.

      A sand battery is a type of thermal energy storage system that uses sand or crushed rock to store heat. Electricity — typically from renewable sources — is used to heat the sand. That stored heat can later be used for various ends, including to warm buildings.

      The economics are compelling, and it’s hard to get any cheaper than the crushed soapstone now housed inside an insulated silo in the small town of Pornainen. The soapstone was basically trash — discarded from a Finnish fireplace maker.

    2. bedok77 on

      GG to Elon..
      “Polar Night didn’t disclose the project’s cost, though the raw materials are cheap and the structure itself isn’t particularly complex. A much smaller prototype built a few years ago cost around $25 per kilowatt-hour of storage, the company estimated at the time. It’s likely the new version is cheaper. Lithium-ion batteries cost around $115 per kilowatt-hour.”

    3. CertainMiddle2382 on

      Well « sand » is a little of a misnomer.

      This is all about insulation…

      Like if a plane was all about seats 🙂

    6. Ilsanjo on

      So this could be done places where there is a large heating need and times of day where there is very cheap clean energy?  Obviously only really viable for large groups of houses or very large buildings, and cases where clean energy production doesn’t correspond to solar energy from hot days.  

    8. theonlycv02 on

      I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

    10. klawUK on

      isn’t this like storage heaters we’ve had in the UK since the 60s/70s but on a massive scale? Those things (I think they’re still around) were just concrete/bricks inside a ‘radiator’ type surround, heated with overnight cheap electric to dispense heat during the winter.

      Nice idea.

      Sodium ion hopefully will be the equivalent for affordable large scale electricity storage