Two Finnish researchers have installed the first sand battery in Kankaanpפפ town and connected it to the centralized heating system. It is making all the buzz but why the first sand battery installed in Finland can be a game changer? Let us find out.

To put it simply, it is a matter of fact that they preferred sand to water due to its advantages. The first sand battery in the world was installed in Kankaanpפפ town, Finland in June 2022, and it can store heat energy from renewable resources for months.

Finnish developers Tommi Eronen, CEO and Ville Kivioja, lead scientist from Polar Night Energy said that the batteries were made from the sand collected from the construction sites.

This sand battery can be the solution to all problems related to annual energy supply. According to the intergovernmental organization International Energy Agency (IEA), half of the world’s energy usage accounts for heat energy, including transport 30% and electricity 20%. This sand battery is a massive steel silo of about 7 meters tall and 4 meters wide consisting of 100 tons of sand.

It is connected to the centralized heating network of the town that is responsible for warming up buildings and the public water system.

According to The Finnish District Heating and Cooling Association, all Finland cities have centralized heating networks and out of them 70% are powered by renewable resources. But Finnish researchers decided to use sand instead of water, focusing on its advantages.

The installed battery in Kankaanpפפ can store up to 8 MWh (megawatt-hours) of energy and heat is released at 0.1 MW. This amount is enough to provide heating solutions for about 100 homes along with a swimming pool for 80 hours on full charge.

Ville Kivioja, lead scientist at Polar Night Energy said in this context, “For discharging 2 MW of heat, we roughly need 2 kW of electricity. Thus, 1,000 times more power is discharged as heat than is used as electricity. We are developing a 200 MWh battery that can discharge heat at the rate of 2 MW (enough to meet the heating need of 100 Kankaanpפפ houses), with a discharge time of 100 hours.”

Associate professor at the School of Technology and Innovations, Energy Technology at the University of Vaasa in Finland, Xiaoshu Lu said, “The technology is promising, but its current capacity is not enough to meet the heating needs of an entire season.”

In this context, Kivioja said that increasing the capacity is not a problem, and to which he further added, “We can make 10 times bigger storages as well. But it is not reasonable to make an entire town to rely on just one storage system.”

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The Polar Night Energy believe that the battery has a huge potential even for countries without district or centralized heating networks. Kivioja said, “In India, for instance, the battery provides big opportunities for process heating in industries or heating municipal building complexes. It can be set up for any industry that requires more than 10,000 MWh heating in a year.”

The heating capacity of sand over water is the main reason why the first sand battery installed in Finland can be a game changer.

Source: Polar Night Energy

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Elliot is a passionate environmentalist and blogger who has dedicated his life to spreading awareness about conservation, green energy, and renewable energy. With a background in environmental science, he has a deep understanding of the issues facing our planet and is committed to educating others on how they can make a difference.

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