0x815World’s largest thermal energy storage to be built in Vantaa, Finland
cosmicrookieWhy can’t we store energy generated by wind turbines this way?
I live in Denmark and we sell electricity to Germany but when it is windy, Germany asks Denmark to stop their energy production because prices are getting too low. They actually pay turbine owners money to not make electricity when its windy!
Why not simply convert the unsaleable e ectricity it to heat and store it to be spend when its needed as heat?
Part of the reason this is even worth doing is that they already have the district heating infrastructure in place to pipe the hot water out to buildings to be used for heat. This storage system is basically an add-on to that infrastructure.
So if you have a city that already has such a hot water piping network in place and has nearby natural caves that can be easily accessed and used in this way, then the cost of implementation is low.
If you don’t have the heat piping infrastructure then it’s a heavy lift to retofit it into all the existing buildings. Doable, but it will take a lot of time and resources.
If you don’t have the caves then this is just a non-starter.
I understand. Here we do have heating undelivered by heating pipes. Heat comes from local energy plants.
We dont have caves though but storing heat underground should be doable i assume
It just feels silly to spend money on not making electricity instead of spending? Money on storing even just some of it in any kind of energy form.
My theory is that energy is still see as a resource instead of a flow. We won’t run out of wind energy. We will only get more and more of it. We shouldn’t care quite as much on how effectively we can convert or store it imo
It’s not that, it’s storing the excess energy and converting it to heat, and that heat is then transferred to homes and thus reducing the use of electricity in the winter. Most of the electricity usage of Finland is in heating during winter. So using excess to store heat is a great idea, and using existing infrastructure to boot.
Great!
So instead of paying money to turn off electricity generation when its cheapest, why not simply generate heat and store it in a similar way during those periods?