The revolutionary sand battery developed by Finland that "could solve the biggest green energy problem."
Finnish researchers have installed the first fully
operational "sand battery" that can store green energy for months.
The researchers say the new battery could solve one of the
big problems of renewable energy: ensuring continuous supply throughout the
year.
The device uses low-grade sand that is heated with cheap
electricity produced by solar or wind power.
The sand stores heat at about 500°C, which can then be used
to heat homes in winter when energy is more expensive.
Finland imports most of its gas from Russia and the war in
Ukraine intensified interest in viable alternatives.
The country has the longest border with Russia of any
European nation. Moscow recently suspended gas and electricity supplies to the
Nordic country over its application for NATO membership.
The key element of this technology? About 100 tons of the type of sand used in construction, stacked in a silo.
"When there is a big increase in green electricity,
what we are looking for is to store it really fast," said Markku Ylönen,
one of the two founders of the company Polar Night Energy, which developed the
sand battery.
This innovation also brings new challenges, looking for a
way to make it profitable and usable worldwide, this way of generating clean
energy would benefit thousands of people in different parts of this planet.
One of the biggest challenges now will be to scale up this
technology and use it for electricity as well as heat.
The efficiency of the system drops dramatically when used to
supply electricity to the grid.
However, storing green energy in the form of heat can also
be an opportunity for the industrial sector, where the heat used in the production
of food, beverages, textiles or medicines comes from burning fossil fuels.
But Finland is the first country with a commercial and
operational system that has been working well, according to the man who bet on
this technology.
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