World's first commercial sand battery begins energy storage in Finland [SAND]

https://newatlas.com ^ | July 05, 2022 | By Loz Blain

[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.

[Red Badger]

In my opinion the efficiency of this sand storage would be such that it isn’t practical.

It isn't. But that never stopped people in search of government grants. Government workers and especially pols are notoriously bad at science and math..........................

[Red Badger]

Back when Obama’s merry band of idiots first took control of the government, a meeting was held for oil and energy industry heads and the Obama administration cabinet and their lackeys.

The Obamanoids put forth some silly scheme to provide energy and one CEO remarked that it would not pass the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Whereupon some Obamanoid remarked, with a smirk, “Who the hell passed THAT law? We’ll get it changed!”............................

These people as more than stupid, they are dangerously so...................

[DariusBane]

Stop it. I hope you freeze this winter clutching a frozen solar panel.

[RayChuang88]

I live in Sacramento, CA. A place where using solar power actually DOES make sense.

[DariusBane]

https://honuaolabioenergy.com/environmental-impact-of-solar-panel-manufacturing/

Nasty stuff in solar panel manufacturing