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>The battery stores 8 MWh of thermal energy when full. When energy demand rises, the battery discharges about 200 kW of power through the heat-exchange pipes: t
by scythe 4y ago
>The battery stores 8 MWh of thermal energy when full. When energy demand rises, the battery discharges about 200 kW of power through the heat-exchange pipes: that's enough to provide heating and hot water for about 100 homes
Cool, so we just need three million of these to take care of Europe.
If you look up Kankanpää on a map, you will find that it is a very small town in the middle of nowhere. And I haven't looked this up, but I'm suspecting it's got abundant sand production/shipping nearby from the Baltic. In those conditions, this sand-thermal storage might work well. But for most of the world, the space requirement, low energy efficiency, and costs associated with building large projects (and digging deep holes) in places where people actually, you know, live, will basically rule this out.
- naavis 4y agoAre you implying it shouldn't be developed if it doesn't cover 100% of all use cases all over the world?
- saalweachter 4y agoI wonder what the threshold is for a niche solution. You don't want to be, like, the only person with a sand-heat-battery. Well, you might, as an individual, if you like to tinker, but as a municipality it's a pain. All of your problems are unique, you can't just hire a repairman to come in and swap out a standard part for another, you don't have a standard payscale for your Sand Management Technician, etc etc. How many installations do you need before it becomes a good idea? 1% of the total? 50 total in a service area?
- scythe 4y agoNo, I'm implying that the headline claim "transform clean energy" is overstated. It mostly applies for far-flung, low-density areas. This is still useful, but not transformative for most of us.