Put simply, a sand battery is essentially high temperature thermal storage that utilizes sand or sand-like materials as its storage medium and can green power for several months at 500 °C. This means sand batteries are capable of discharging hot air when energy prices are higher, allowing the district to heat homes, offices, and the local swimming pool at a much lower cost.
As many know, increasing renewable energy generation capacity to a national grid is only a partial solution, as storage is equally as important, especially in regions more affected by seasonal weather changes such as northern Europe. What this means is that efficient battery storage can help engineers maintain equilibrium in the grid by absorbing power surges and releasing that energy later when the grid needs it. Sand batteries would perfectly complement this crab shell battery, which remain 99.7% efficient after 400-hours
No products found.
Photo credit: BBC
Whenever there’s like this high surge of available green electricity, we want to be able to get it into the storage really quickly. If we have some power stations that are just working for a few hours in the wintertime, when it’s the coldest, it’s going to be extremely expensive. But if we have this sort of solution that provides flexibility for the use, and storage of heat, that would help a lot in terms of expense, I think,” said Markku Ylönen, Co-Founder of Polar Night Energy.
