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Sand batteries.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61996520
Edit: we so need to invest much more into research for such things...
Read this earlier, absolutely amazing and simple
Having once burnt my foot on the beach sand where a BBQ had been the night before I feel disappointed that I didn't "invent" this!
Not sure if it'd be more exciting if this could be made mega big or small domestic scale, probably both
liked that
I got 1.7 Deg C
🤦
1.48c so barely enough.
But I have read Ministry for the Future, so maybe cheating.
I think I've cooked everyone. 2.4DegC.
The ones that survived the anarchy.
It's clever and all but it's going to make ebikes even heavier, all full of sand and that 😉
It’s clever and all but it’s going to make ebikes even heavier, all full of sand and that 😉
Think big; sand trail centres, high carbon-content tyres. Just don't dab your feet
It'll be interesting if sand becomes a high value comodity, all of a sudden north Africa becomes incredibly wealthy, and the middle-east remains minted...
Not sure if it’d be more exciting if this could be made mega big or small domestic scale, probably both
large is better for these things. So a are spheres.
Its just a thermal store and I didn't really seem anything new other than having large enough backing to make a big thermal store.
The Finnish one looks to just store electricity as heat. So not actually a battery. The heat used for local heating. No mention of generating power from the dtored heat or the efficiency.
This one in Newcastle looks like a battery that can return the input power on demand with a 65% efficiency. Storage medium is gravel.
Pumped heat energy storage (PHES) shuffles heat between two tanks containing mineral gravel by means of a working gas, generally an inert gas such as argon. In storage mode, the argon is pressurised to around 12 bar, which heats it up to 500°C. The hot gas enters the top of one of the tanks (designated hot), and flows down slowly at about 3m/s, heating the particulate in the tank and itself cooling down. At the bottom of the tank, the gas is still at 12 bar but now at ambient temperature. At this point, it is expanded back to ambient pressure which cools it to -106°C. It then enters the second tank, cooling the particulate and itself warming up, exiting the tank at the top at ambient temperature and pressure.
To recover energy, the process is reversed
Read this earlier, absolutely amazing and simple
Its simple in one sense - sand is simple. In infrastructure terms its pretty complicated. I'm currently in a home heated by a district heating system. So a big sand battery would be a fairly trivial addition - theres space for one as its a rural setting, all the properties on the system are owned and managed by one operator - we have an agreement in place that we subscribe to that operator for heat as they effectively have a monopoly of the large majority of energy bills. It has to be a very attractive package to keep all the subscribers on board (I pay £50 a month for unmetered heat and hot water) as we can't shop around.
I bet no-one else on the forum is in that position though - your home, your street, your relationship with your neighbours all need to be completely reconfigured and really, thats the difficult bit. Doesnt matter whether the battery is made of sand or gold - most people have no ready application for it in their house or their street as things stand.
Its tricky politically to have a shared resource with your neighbours like this - that banked heat is there for everyone - but what if one family works from home and has the heating on all the time, another house, the guy works offshore and their share of the heat is being used by others? What if a household has only just paid for a new heating system?
We configured our utilities and housing during the era of the Wilson's 'White Heat of Technology' and the emphasis then was on centralised utilities with a focus on an economy of scale for the capital cost, even though that results in losses in transmission - resistance in the wires, leaks in the pipes the power/gas/water is transmitted over larger distances from centralised sources- its a strategy from a time when energy was plentiful so the economics focused on cost effective infrastructure not energy efficient transmission . What this calls for is localised networks and micro generation but thats the opposite of what we have been building for the last half century.
Its something that would work in a social housing setting, for new builds etc. It would work very well where industry and housing operate side by side. If you lived in the vicinity of the old BBC Television Centre homes benefited from a district heating system that drew surplus heat from the generators the BBC used to light the studios, but a think retro fitting a district set up for established housing would be very complex
It's basicly a district heating scheme with a storage heater. It's a great idea if you have access to cheap energy and need to store it for a short time and need heat. I'm not sure it scales very well though? The volumetric heat capacity of sand isn't that great. And cheap electricity isn't really a thing once it's connected to a grid.
If the efficiency isn't great then you may as well go for boreholes and heat pumps?
1kJ of energy into a heat pump gets you ~2kJ of heat.
1kJ of energy into a battery of any type is getting you <1kJ of heat..
Your planet is on course for 1.51C of warming by 2100
1kJ of energy into a heat pump gets you ~2kJ of heat.
1kJ of energy into a battery of any type is getting you <1kJ of heat..
Though the case for a storage is that on windless nights it can supply wind or solar stored power.
The question is whether it can do this economically compared to the current system where variations in wind and solar output are balanced by gas.
The question is whether it can do this economically compared to the current system where variations in wind and solar output are balanced by gas.
I suppose being Finland that insulation must be better?
I'd be interested to see the economics of it, there are plenty of other industries that can adapt to the electricity price, so it's never going to get "free" energy. The problem with heat storage is PV isn't as efficient as solar heating either via hot water in vacuum panels or mirrors and molten salt. Although you could store heat energy from those for longer term. But then there's less demand for heat in the months when the sun shines.
Wind maybe a different matter. But you still end up at the conclusion that you need such a surplus that the price drops (which would preclude that investment).
Its something that would work in a social housing setting, for new builds etc.
I used to work on a number of small CHP, (combined heat and power) sites that were supplying process heat and electrical power to adjacent chemical works. A number of these works closed down, leaving the power stations as small stand alone CCGT, (Combined cycle gas turbine) stations. Where the factory used to be large housing estates were built, all new homes with individual gas heating and hot water boilers. The planning system that allowed this happen without implementing district heating from the power station is absolutely ****ing insane.
I bet no-one else on the forum is in that position though
My ex is.
She pays about 125 quid a month for all heating, hot/cold water and sewage.
It's all run and managed centrally by the company that all the home owners in her patch have a single share in. Think there are about 180-200 homes in total. They are still adding additional homes.
Used to be run from a wood/pellet fired boiler arrangement. That was retired a couple of years ago and replaced with a GSHP plant and solar (GSHP is installed and running, the solar is being done on some of the suitable buildings one at a time as they do external repairs) once the solar is all installed, the grid requirements will drop drastically. They also have a dozen or so thermal stores in the plant building, they're planning to connect surplus solar to them as well.
Should be interesting to see when it's all finished.
There are loads of them, all over the place. Fjärevärme they call it.
And as an aside, i found plans online for a greenhouse using similar tech to the sand battery, Filling a void under the floor with thermal mass and circulating air from the top of the roof into the filled void to maintain a stead (ish) temperature day and night.
Just needed a simple controller and a couple of thermocouples.
It’s one heck of a battery, but it is just a battery just like Dinorwig in Wales is just a very big battery
The volumetric heat capacity of sand isn’t that great.
Doesn't matter when it's that cheap and you have the space for it.
I suppose being Finland that insulation must be better?
In my experience insulation in Finland is indeed very good, especially as compared to the USA where it's terrible or even, unbelievably, non-existent despite it being just as cold.
Also in Finland a great many people (maybe even the majority) live in well designed apartment blocks, thanks to a socialised response to mass rural depopulation after the war. These are not only heat efficient as a concept and as implemented but also usually have combined heat and hot water anyway. And as the density ends up being relatively high it would be a good option for them.
It’s one heck of a battery, but it is just a battery just like Dinorwig in Wales is just a very big battery
It's better than Dinorwic because it can be built anywhere there's space, whereas there are very few sites that can do pumped water storage like Dinorwic in the UK and possibly none in Finland.
Doesn’t matter when it’s that cheap and you have the space for it.
Sand is cheap. But we don't know the cost of the infrastructure or the round trip efficiency.
There is no such thing as free electricity. Wind and solar generators almost all get fixed prices. So 100 units in and 50 units out doubles the effective price, leaving aside the cost of building and running it.
Well yes of course. But storing it is better than not storing it. And using a cheap medium is likely to be better than an expensive one.. not sure your point?
Well yes of course. But storing it is better than not storing it.
Depends how you define "not storing it".
If an aluminium smelter, or arc furnace is prepared to pay a higher price than the storage battery then that's where the power will end up.
If an aluminium smelter, or arc furnace is prepared to pay a higher price than the storage battery then that’s where the power will end up.
It's designed to be used for grid balancing ie. absorbing suprlus energy. If there is an excess demand for energy then by definition there is no surplus.
The exact same argument could be used against pumped storage hydro and yet...
But storing it is better than not storing it.
Depends on price. Building more power stations may be cheaper than expensive storage. With enough gas and nuclear along with existing pumped storage we don't need anything else.
Storage for day to day varation is one thing. Storing enough wind and solar for week long near zero wind conditions is probably unaffordable.
If an aluminium smelter, or arc furnace is prepared to pay a higher price than the storage battery then that’s where the power will end up.
But incredibly wind generators actually get paid to turn off turbines in periods of high generation and low demand, this is where storage is needed.
Storage for day to day varation is one thing. Storing enough wind and solar for week long near zero wind conditions is probably unaffordable.
Correct. You also need a fair amount of large traditional generation on the grid to maintain the 50Hz supply. renewables can't do this regulation.
renewables can’t do this regulation.
Hydro is one of the main ways the 50Hz are maintained. I used to sample generation water and its impact on the river and just had to turn up when I knew they'd be generating. After a few visits I could predict within 10 minutes. I did the pre-generation samples then went to the control room and watched the Hz. When enough people started making their morning tea and toast it dropped to the limit and they started the turbines.
Hydro is one of the main ways the 50Hz are maintained.
I wasn't really thinking of Hydro as renewable in the UK, it's all storage and not river run. I know that's not the case in France where you are.
Nant-Y-Moch was most definitely river run. The reason I was there was to collect evidence to justify how much of the river they could borrow.
The French reservoirs often double as river run and storage. An increasing number are being equipped for pump storage even when they were originally just river run.