"A small town in Finland is experimenting with a new type of infrastructure: the world's largest sand battery. The battery-a 42-foot-tall, nearly 50-foot-wide silo filled with 2,000 tons of crushed stone-sits on the edge of a parking lot. When there's extra renewable electricity on the grid and power is cheap, the system uses electricity to heat up the crushed stone. That heat is stored in the battery until nearby buildings need to use it."
"The basic approach is simple. "We just heat air and [circulate it] through sand," says Liisa Naskali, COO of Polar Night Energy, the Finnish startup that designed the technology. Sand, or other material crushed into sand-size particles, has the ability to store heat for weeks. Unlike some other batteries, the system doesn't rely on chemicals, doesn't degrade, and won't catch on fire."
"Now if someone in a nearby apartment turns on hot water for a shower, the heat comes from the sand battery. Like other district heating systems, the heat from the battery travels to other buildings via pipes filled with hot water; each building has its own equipment to distribute the heat to radiators, floor heaters, or other HVAC systems. The battery started running this summer, and was officially inaugurated this week, meaning the district heating system no longer uses oil at all."
The world's largest sand battery sits in Pornainen, Finland: a 42-foot-tall, nearly 50-foot-wide silo filled with 2,000 tons of crushed stone that stores heat. The system heats air with excess renewable electricity to warm the crushed stone, then circulates stored heat to a district heating network supplying municipal offices, a school, businesses, and apartments. Polar Night Energy designed the technology. The battery began operation in summer and enabled the district network to stop using oil; over summer it supplied all heat. During colder months the battery will work alongside wood chips, cutting wood-chip use by about 60%.
Read at Fast Company
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