L R AS Published on Saturday 9 July 2022 - n° 412 - Categories:other methods
Commissioning of a sand-based storage facility in Finland
A sand-based high-temperature heat storage system will provide district heating for the town of Kankaanpää in western Finland. The storage system has a heating capacity of 100 kW and an energy capacity of 8 MWh.
It is housed in a 4 m x 7 m high steel container. It is capable of storing electricity in the form of heat for several months at temperatures of between 500 and 600°C.
The size of the system can vary from a few dozen to several thousand cubic metres. It can be located either in a cylinder, as in the Kankaanpää project, or underground to use as little space as possible.
The system uses ordinary dry sand (without any special treatment) as the storage medium. It works with pipes containing air. When this air is heated, it is pumped through the pipes and reaches the sand, which is in turn heated to 600°C.
Similar systems have recently been developed by NREL and in Italy by Magaldi.
PV Magazine, 7 July 2022
Editor's note These attempts show that a solution needs to be found to transfer energy from summer to winter, or simply from one sunny period to another cloudy one.
