Fine but how do you really utilize that energy? Cannot use it to drive turbines....
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.
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.
"When this sand is heated up, using a simple heat exchanger buried in the middle of it, this device is capable of storing an impressive 8 megawatt-hours of energy, at a nominal power rating of 100 kW, with the sand heated to somewhere around 500-600 degrees Celsius (932-1112 °F)."
Seems to me that would be enough heat to generate enough steam to run a high pressure steam generator.
In northern climates well over half of all energy consumption is used in heating buildings. Not having to go through two exchanges of energy makes this very efficient in storing and releasing heat. Joule heating is 99% efficient in turning electricity into heat. The larger the volume the less the surface area to mass ratio it scales at the cube root of volume. Sand is also very dense so you get another boost in efficiency. Storing cheap off peak or surplus wind or solar electricity in the form of dense packed heat makes a lot of sense in cold climates. District heating is also very efficient and can send heat upwards of 100km away with less than 10% losses. The Chinese are using AP1100 reactors to build out city sized District heating zones in their northern provinces. They plan over 150 of them.