Earned the world's first power plant on sand batteries

On July 7, 2022, Polar Night Energy announced the launch of the world's first commercial sand battery. It is installed on the territory of Vatajankoski.

The thermal energy storage system is built around a large insulated steel tank - measuring 4 meters wide and 7 meters high. The tank is filled with ordinary sand, dried and cleaned.

Launch of Commercial Sand Battery

Heating the sand with an ordinary heat exchanger built into the center of the tank allows the entire "battery" to store 8 MW-hours of energy at a nominal power of 100 kW. At the same time, the sand is heated to almost 500-600 ° C. If necessary, energy is extracted in the same way.

Vatajankowski uses stored heat along with excess heat from its own data servers to power the local district heating system. Heated water can be used for heating buildings, in industry and in other situations that require heat.

Converting electricity to heat is really simple. However, converting heat to electricity requires turbines and more sophisticated mechanisms. As long as we use heat as heat, everything remains simple, "says Polar Night CTO Markku Ilonen.

The company claims that the efficiency of its system reaches 99%, it retains heat with minimal losses for several months and can serve for decades. Polar Night sees its system as an easy and cheap way to store energy.

The company claims the technology is scalable, and in some projects it is possible to install 20 GWh energy storage facilities, in which sand will heat up to 1,000 ° C, producing hundreds of megawatts of rated power. Bulk underground tanks can be created from abandoned mine shafts if they have the correct shape. At the same time, there is no need to use high-pressure tanks, and the highest costs are often associated with laying pipelines.^[1]

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