The World's Largest Sand Battery is Coming to Finland!

The world's largest sand battery is coming to Finland. With 100 MWh capacity, it can store excess solar/wind energy and cut district heating emissions by 70%. Heat stays at 500°C for months, replacing oil & woodchips.

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The Engineering with Rosie team is:
Rosemary Barnes: presenter, producer, writer
Fatini Nur: Research and production assistant

[zapfanzapfan]

I'm surprised this hasn't gone super sized yet. An oil cistern sized system would hold on the order of 10 GWh of heat. That would work really well for large district heating systems and could take advantage of near zero electricity prices when it is windy in the Nordic market.

[photoo]

A week's worth of heating for a town stored in a 13x15m construction is suprisingly efficient.

Instead of a street with 20 houses have these batteries and you're basically set for winter

[EnergyCourtier]

I love sand batteries. Such a cool idea.

[barryschwarz]

It's not a battery, it's a "thermal battery". A battery is a device to store electricity chemically. Using just the word battery is misleading.

[steve]

With that high of a storage temperature, what is the transition material/process to get to hot water? It would seem that if water was exposed to that temperature directly, it would create a flash-to-steam situation that wouldn't do anyone any good.

[PinataOblongata]

If only Aus could store cold for district cooling!

[arran.miller]

160 tones savings seem very small. Its like 200 households per year.

[dellmerlin]

Rosie, could you do some "napkin" engineering for us. What kind of home sand battery, solar resistive heated to 500 C in the center during summer, would remain below 100 C on the outside water coil six months later, for winter hydronic heating, to supplement the solar panels? (How far would heat travel in dry sand over 6 months)

[ncc]

so it saves 20h worth of 747 flight time in co2....

[deanfielding]

Why not just use a much larger, but lower temp insulated pool of water, at lower temps you could get a cop of 3 so, store 3x as much thermal energy. It would still be cheap and just use a heat pump instead of resistive heater.
I think I need to do some trials…

[WarblesOnALot]

G'day,

Yay Team...!

Very innovative, indeed...

I recall reading of the idea that mechanical Energy from a Wind-Turbine was at some point considered as a source if Energy to be stored by mechanically agitating a Tank of Water - aiming to heat the liquid by Friction from Hydrodynamic Drag...

Hot Sand warmed by burried Radiators in parallel vwith a Water Coil through which to extract the stored Heat...

I
LIKE
it...

Keep on keepin' on.

Stay safe.

;-p

Ciao !

[CHMichael]

I might have misunderstood but shouldn't it be under ground ?

[hape]

Yawn, in Hamburg, Germany, we have had such an energy storage facility with 1, 000 tons of volcanic rock up and running since 2019(!).

[aliandy.jf.nababan]

Europe house include heater can use this instead dependency on LNG? Who can comes out with answers

[tomasmattsson]

Pännäinen is not a town.. small village 😅😅

[advorak]

That is not a battery, that is a heat sink.
Not that it is a bad thing, just the wrong name. That's all.

[BOYSWILLBEBOYS]

Calling BS on the figures. You’re not including CO2 emissions from construction of all new equipment nor manufacturing of equipment.