Energy costs are rising around the world and governments are investing heavily in renewable energy sources. Although it is theoretically possible to produce unlimited energy with the wind, solar and hydroelectric method, storing this produced energy poses a major problem. For this reason, large research budgets are allocated to battery technology to solve the energy storage problem.
A new proposed method is called the “sand cell”. The technology, which aims to accumulate energy in the form of heat in huge sand tanks, works on spreading the energy obtained from wind and sun in the form of heat when necessary. A sand cell can store 8 megawatt-hours of energy and can supply 200 kilowatts of energy on demand. It also has the capacity to store energy for months.
“Our main goal is to create a capacity to store excess amounts of wind and solar energy,” the inventor of the technology, Polar Energy, said in a statement. can be used to generate resources.”
Storing energy as heat is not a new idea, but storing it in sand can be a very efficient solution. Sand has a significantly higher boiling point and can store much more energy than a similarly sized water tank.
The company already has a large sand cell built in a small town called Kankaanpää in western Finland, where it helps heat homes and a local swimming pool. The 7 meter high battery contains 110 tons of sand. When energy is needed, air flows through pipes that move close to the sand and heats up, where it either provides heating or turns water into steam to drive a turbine.
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