Post by account_disabled on Feb 27, 2024 23:49:11 GMT -6
The world's first commercial sand battery installed in Finland.
Moving towards zero carbon emissions means dealing with the intermittent and unpredictable nature of green energy sources , such as wind and solar. These intermittent renewables do not produce power hours a day, so the transition to green energy will require large amounts of energy storage.
Polar Night Energy and Vatajankoski, an energy company based in western Finland, have installed sand thermal energy storage, the world's first commercial solution to store electricity in sand as heat for use in a district heating network. The sand battery, which has one hundred tons of sand inside, is placed in the Vatajankoski power plant area and provides heat for the Vatajankoski district heating network in Kankaanpää.
Can the sand bat C Level Executive List tery be part of the solution to energy storage?
The sand-based thermal energy storage has a steel container about meters wide and meters high that has an automated heat storage system and one hundred tons of sand inside. Sand can store a large amount of heat in a small volume at a temperature of around to degrees Celsius, which can then heat homes in winter when energy is more expensive. The sand battery is capable of storing an impressive megawatt-hours of energy at a nominal power of kW.
Vatajankoski uses the heat provided by storage to prepare waste heat recovered from its data servers for high-performance computing. Depending on the season, the -degree waste heat temperature of the servers must be raised to - degrees before feeding into the district heating network.
“The storage build went well, especially considering the solution is completely new. We managed to get everything in order despite some challenges and a short delay. Now the sand is already hot,” says Markku Ylönen, co-founder and CTO of Polar Night Energy. “We have already learned that our system has even more potential than we initially estimated. “It has been a positive surprise.”
This innovation is part of the smart and green energy transition. Heat storage can significantly help increase intermittent renewables on the power grid. At the same time, we can prepare the waste heat to a level usable to heat a city. This is a logical step towards heat production without combustion, says Ylönen.
Moving towards zero carbon emissions means dealing with the intermittent and unpredictable nature of green energy sources , such as wind and solar. These intermittent renewables do not produce power hours a day, so the transition to green energy will require large amounts of energy storage.
Polar Night Energy and Vatajankoski, an energy company based in western Finland, have installed sand thermal energy storage, the world's first commercial solution to store electricity in sand as heat for use in a district heating network. The sand battery, which has one hundred tons of sand inside, is placed in the Vatajankoski power plant area and provides heat for the Vatajankoski district heating network in Kankaanpää.
Can the sand bat C Level Executive List tery be part of the solution to energy storage?
The sand-based thermal energy storage has a steel container about meters wide and meters high that has an automated heat storage system and one hundred tons of sand inside. Sand can store a large amount of heat in a small volume at a temperature of around to degrees Celsius, which can then heat homes in winter when energy is more expensive. The sand battery is capable of storing an impressive megawatt-hours of energy at a nominal power of kW.
Vatajankoski uses the heat provided by storage to prepare waste heat recovered from its data servers for high-performance computing. Depending on the season, the -degree waste heat temperature of the servers must be raised to - degrees before feeding into the district heating network.
“The storage build went well, especially considering the solution is completely new. We managed to get everything in order despite some challenges and a short delay. Now the sand is already hot,” says Markku Ylönen, co-founder and CTO of Polar Night Energy. “We have already learned that our system has even more potential than we initially estimated. “It has been a positive surprise.”
This innovation is part of the smart and green energy transition. Heat storage can significantly help increase intermittent renewables on the power grid. At the same time, we can prepare the waste heat to a level usable to heat a city. This is a logical step towards heat production without combustion, says Ylönen.