In recent years, the energy demand has been increasing worldwide. Limited resources led giant companies to renewable energy sources. Of course, the storage of energy as well as its production is one of the areas that need to be developed. A company in Finland has a sand cell solution for this issue.
Sand battery stores renewable energy as heat
Polar Night Energy and Vatajankoski, an energy company in Western Finland, come up with an unusual energy storage system. They started to use renewable energy instead of Lithium-ion or other battery technologies, using the “Sand Battery” technology they designed.
Giant step in renewable energy!
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) broke the record for efficiency in renewable energy.
The technology can store the energy obtained as heat in the sand. A number of institutions have tried this technology before, including the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory. However, the Finnish company was the commercial institution that took the first step in this regard. In the statement, the operation of the battery was expressed as follows.
The resistive heating process used to heat the sand produces hot air that circulates inside the structure. When it’s time to use the stored energy, the battery discharges the heated air into hot water in the district’s heating system, which is then pumped into homes, offices and even pools.
The sand cell can store not only solar energy, but also energy from wind turbines. According to the statement, the stored energy is designed to conserve heat energy during long winter periods. The company describes the energy of heat in the sand as “hotter than stoves in saunas.”