Posted on 07/06/2022 12:44:53 PM PDT by Red Badger
A new type of battery being put to use in Finland is exploring the potential of sand as an energy storage medium
Wind and solar power are intermittent, generating power when it's available rather than when it's needed, so the green energy transition will require huge amounts of energy storage. This could end up taking many forms, from conventional lithium-based "big battery" installations, to flow batteries, silicon phase-change batteries, molten salt batteries, iron-air batteries, gravity batteries, carbon dioxide expansion batteries, and other more unusual ideas like buoyancy batteries.
Each has its own advantages and disadvantages in terms of efficiency, size, location, installation costs, operating costs, input and output power ratings, longevity and how long it can store the energy for. That's good, since different solutions will fill different needs – some backing up the power grid during instantaneous demand spikes, others smoothing out the mismatched daily curves between demand and renewable supply, and others still helping to address seasonal supply drops, like when solar drops off through the winter.
Here's another for the pile, coming out of Finland. Polar Night Energy says it's just opened its first commercial sand battery at the premises of "new energy" company Vatajankoski, a few hours out of Helsinki.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Oh great. If Joe Biden was in charge of the Sahara Desert, they’d run out of sand.
Stores heat. Distributes engery in the form of hot water.
Fine but how do you really utilize that energy? Cannot use it to drive turbines....
Southern California would still find a way to have power blackouts. LOL
No, not at all. You take showers right? Seriously, it’s a sand waterheater.
No, not at all. You take showers right? Seriously, it’s a sand waterheater.
If I could get a smaller size to heat my driveway to keep it clean in winter…that would be a big plus.
Ok I guess that works.
Good for washers/dishwashers, too.
You sure can’t spin a turbine with it, so no electricity.
It's not used to generate electircity.
When it's needed, the energy is extracted again as heat in the same way. Vatajankowski is using this stored heat, in conjunction with excess heat from its own data servers, to feed the local district heating system, which uses piped water to transmit heat around the area. It can then be used to heat buildings, or swimming pools, or in industrial processes, or in any other situation that requires heat.
It’s used to heat water, which is then distributed throughout the “district” for general heating.
This would work well in heating large facilities, plants, campuses,…that sort of thing.
My hearing aid is equipped with a molten salt battery.
/s
Regards,
Underground water here is 68°F all year round.
You could put pipes under your driveway and pump water up and thru them then back into the ground?.......................
Back yard hasha, firewood heated sand/hot water.
Fields of deplorables
Mauritania and Algeria will dominate the sand cartels in the future [?]
Lots of energy stored in coal.
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