And because of those very high temperatures, the companys chief technologyofficer,Markku Ylonen, pointed out that the battery wont only benefit residential customers. So how does the sand battery work? It's possible to build a system designed for longer-term heat storage toward the center of the cylinder of sand, but shorter-term repeated use cycles closer to the top surface or the outside. ), The company plans to soon raise more funding to expand, and is in discussions with other district heating managers in Finland and Sweden, and with industrial plants around the globe. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Polar Night Energys heat storage system is a 23-foot-tall steel container filled with 100 tons of sand. Low-cost electricity warms the sand up to 500C by resistive heating (the same process that makes electric fires work). Doesn't it seem that this would be easy enough to scale DOWN so that sandpits could be built beneath new individual homes and any excess solar from the home's rooftop system could used to create a supplemental heat source for winters? Get the most important mobility news in your inbox each week. We've updated our Privacy Policy, which will go in to effect on September 1, 2022. an energy-efficient house can become a big wind-powered battery, the basic principles of maximizing exergy. Brilliant because simple and inexpensive for the stated purpose, Would be interesting to know the rate that energy can be transferred into/out of the store, the thermal coefficient of sand is really low ( 0.06 W/mK ) so its probably good for long slow energy release ( for local district heating as mentioned in the article ) but less likely to be of use for later converting back to electricity. Since sand melts at hundreds of degrees Celsius, a sand tower can store energy for months at a time, providing a sustainable long-term solution. This means that once heated, the silo can stay hot for months with minimal intervention. The business name Polar Night is of course a reference to the fact that parts of Northern Finland see no sun at all during the winter, since they're above the latitude (~68 degrees north) where there's no direct sun at all for weeks on end through the depths of winter. Polar Night Energy and Vatajankoski, an energy utility in Western Finland, have built a storage system that can store electricity as heat in the sand. Adding more renewables to the electricity grid also means you need to boost other energy sources to balance the network, as too much or too little power can cause it to collapse. So it is not a serious stretch to call it a form of battery. We sent some questions to the designers, and they had not responded at the time of writing of the post, but Polar Night Energy Chief Technology Officer Markku Ylnen apologized, noting that these are "crazy days" for them. 
But the Finns maintain that their battery will work with the lowest grade stuff available and there are billions of tons of that around. They are cooking sand to high temperatures, which is ending up in a district heating system at one-tenth the temperature, using the highest-exergy sources for low exergy uses; it is what engineer Robert Bean called "warming your hands with a blowtorch." *ad. 
VideoThe town destroyed to make way for a whites-only suburb, The shocking fate of the tree that changed the world, False claims of 'deepfake' President Biden go viral, This curious geographic transaction has been going on for more than 350 years, The youngest in the labour market have a slew of demands. Sand is a very effective medium for storing heat and loses little over time. The sand battery at Kankaanpaa in southwest Finland. This is a logical step toward combustion-free heat production. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. Read about our approach to external linking. When you think of energy solutions, you might not imagine 100 tonnes of builders sand piled inside a huge silo. Video, How a cartoon dog became a role model for dads, The town destroyed to make way for a whites-only suburb. It looked like a form of seasonal thermal energy storage (STES), which has been done for decades, and that is pretty much how the Finnish designers described it on their website. The biggest difference with Polar Night Energy's system is the extremely high temperature at which it is storing thermal energyup to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit), which is well over 10 times as high as most STES systems run at. And while I was blas and lukewarm before, I am definitely getting more excited, as it not only stores the energy but the exergy you get when you have lots of free electricity sitting around in summer. One of the big challenges now is whether the technology can be scaled up to really make a difference - and will the developers be able to use it to get electricity out as well as heat? Free AI tool restores old photos by creating slightly new loved ones, Ford reveals an F-150 Lightning built for police work, The best trail cameras for keeping an eye on your backyard wildlife. 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. These rough and ready grains may well represent a simple, cost-effective way of storing power for when it's needed most. Concerns over sources of heat and light, especially with the long, cold Finnish winter on the horizon are preoccupying politicians and citizens alike. An excess pile of sand from the heat storage. Polar Night Energys CTO Markku Ylnen says: This innovation is a part of the smart and green energy transition. For fourteen years, Switzerland worked on turning its reservoirs into massive water batteries. The toughest question is about intermittency - how do you keep the lights on when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow? There's nothing special about the sand the company says it just needs to be dry and free from combustible debris. Not great news for Finland, a country that experiences long, cold winters. Or just a lot of hot air from the salesman??? It's early days for the technology, though, and other companies and organizations might be able to find solutions for those issues. In our earlier post about it, I was lukewarm. Well written, Loz. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you. Whenever renewable sources generate extra power that exceeds the capacity, it distributes that energy to the sand battery. The sand stores the heat at around 500C, which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive. "It's really easy to convert electricity into heat," says Polar Night CTO Markku Ylnen. Its something thats available everywhere, says Ylnen. It can then be used to heat buildings, or swimming pools, or in industrial processes, or in any other situation that requires heat. A 47 meter steel container is filled with hundreds of tonnes of sand. By clicking Accept All Cookies, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Sign up for the daily Marketplace newsletter to make sense of the most important business and economic news. This sand battery, says the company, will have its greatest impact during periods like this, when its long-duration storage will keep buildings heated cheaply and cleanly through the freezing Finnish winter. These processes are mostly fueled by gas and coal.". Afterward, a heat exchanger transfers the air to sand. are actively looking at sand as a viable form of battery for green power. Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. When it's time to use the stored energy, the battery discharges that heated air to warm water in the district's heating system, which is then pumped into homes, offices and even pools. The beauty of this material, according to the power plants managing director, Pekka Passi, is that it retains the heat without a significant loss for months on end and it doesnt evaporate. Last I checked we were running out of that kind of sand. The energy transfer rate is in the article - 100kw for the existing installation, potentially scaled up to 100Mw. Polar Night Energy isnt solving the problem of how to store electricity cheaply, since its inefficient to turn electricity into heat and then back into electricity. Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin. At the moment, Polar's sand battery only serves a single city, and it's still unclear whether the technology can be scaled up. It is only about 70% efficient, but allows the energy to be transported. The only reason that it makes any sense or anyone would actually do this is that the high-quality power source is essentially freeit is the excess electricity from solar energy collected in summer. Did the Pope's apology in Canada go far enough? But in a corner of a small power plant in western Finland stands a new piece of technology that has the potential to ease some of these worries. The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory is investigating sands potential for energy storage, but the Finns got there first. Finlands latest development could be a more affordable solution. The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy. Tesla now offers price matching, so its important to shop for the best quotes. The sand is able to store heat at around 500600C (9321,112F) for months, so power generated in the summer can be used to heat homes in the winter. (Image Credit: Polar Night Energy). Cate Lawrence is an Australian tech journo living in Berlin. Electrek Green Energy Brief: A daily technical, financial and political review/analysis of important green energy news. An Avnet Company 2022 Premier Farnell Limited. It's possible to create bulk underground storage facilities out of disused mine shafts, if they're the right shape. This technology can be very useful in many industries, even if it just stores heat.
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. The BBC also says that its efficiency "falls dramatically" when it comes to returning electricity to the grid instead. Sand is an ideal material for the purpose. The equipment is next to a data center, which produces waste heat. On the edge of a small town in Western Finland, a startup called Polar Night Energy worked with a local utility to pioneer something that doesnt exist anywhere else in the world: a giant sand battery.
(Image Credit: Polar Night Energy). in northern africa a solar farm could use this battery system to store excess energy. The company claims an efficiency factor up to 99 percent, a capability to store heat with minimal loss for months on end, and a lifespan in the decades. The idea for the sand battery was first developed at a former pulp mill in the city of Tampere, with the council donating the work space and providing funding to get it off the ground. In the future, the energy-storage silo can and should be directly connected to wind or solar sources of power. US charges Russian with interfering in US politics, Canadian narrator of Islamic State videos jailed, Mother held captive for 17 years speaks of ordeal, Hitler's watch sells for $1.1m in controversial sale. The sand battery provides power for the districts central heating system. So an optimal period for us is something like two to three weeks of discharging and charging., The system is already competitive with gas, and the large-scale systems that the company plans to build next100 times the size of the first silowill be competitive with burning biomass, something that Finland currently does to produce much of its heat now. Specifically, the system can discharge a maximum of 100kW of heat power and has a total energy capacity of 8MWh. But a small six-person startupin Finland has come up with an intriguing and low-cost solution:It has developedthe worlds first commercial heat-storage battery, comprising a very cheap, low-tech material. Especially now, Ylonen said,that Russia has cut off all gas supplies to the country after it applied to join NATO. Theyve only, The challenge is that theres no shortage of innovation in the renewable, But the company has succeeded in going hyper-local. When you think of energy solutions, you might not imagine 100 tonnes of builders sand piled inside a huge silo. An award-winning team of journalists, designers, and videographers who tell brand stories through Fast Company's distinctive lens, The future of innovation and technology in government for the greater good, Fast Company's annual ranking of businesses that are making an outsize impact, Leaders who are shaping the future of business in creative ways, New workplaces, new food sources, new medicine--even an entirely new economic system.
It has the longest Russian border in the EU and Moscow has now halted gas and electricity supplies in the wake of Finland's decision to join NATO. Aesop would approve. My guess is that the efficiency will be found much wanting, while the costs are extremely underestimated from real-life construction. Similar to traditional storage systems for renewables, Polar's technology stores energy from wind turbines and solar panels that isn't used at once.