Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town
Giant 'sand battery' holds a week's heat for a whole town
A new industrial-scale 'sand battery' has been announced for Finland, which packs 1 MW of power and a capacity of up to 100 MWh of thermal energy for use during those cold polar winters. The new battery will be about 10 times bigger than a pilot plant that’s been running since 2022.
They didn't say, but I'm wondering what the loss is when you convert the heat back into electricity. I assume they're boiling water and turning turbines with it- I can't imagine they're losing too much.
They're using heat exchangers to add it to the municipal heating loop. No electricity involved on that side.
I saw that, but they said it could be converted to heat with a loss.
How does it hold warmth months at a time? Seems a little hard to believe, but if it's true, that'd be great. I hope this isn't something that's spoken of once and never again.
Sand has what's called a high thermal capacity. This means it takes a long time to heat up, but also a long time to cool down. Metals such as copper have a low thermal capacity relative to sand. You can quickly heat copper but it also cools just as fast.
The chimneys of fireplaces was often surrounded by pockets of sand or similar material. This meant when the fireplace had a fire going. The heat would travel through the chimney and slowly heat up the sand. Once it became night and you extinguished the fire the sand and stone of the fireplace would slowly release the stored heat. Making sure the house was heated even at night.
The relatively low cost of sand as well as it not having a significant reaction to heat (water would boil for example). Means it's a pretty cost-effective material for storing thermal energy. Assuming the batteries are extremely well insulated the sand might stay warm for that long.
(It's been a decade since I studied thermal energy though)
Thanks, that explains it pretty well! 👍