This is not a battery, this is thermal storage. No electricity is stored or generated. (Unlike liquid-metal batteries, for example, which are actual battery storage.)
Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
111–120 of 190 posts
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#112This is super cool but the ending is bizarre. > A comment on the YouTube video below complained, “Not a word about return on investment in the presentation. That means it’ll never pay off” MAGAlomaniacs are everywhere these days. Given the supposed 50+ year lifespan of such a battery, I find it hard to believe it doesn't turn a profit at some point. And I understand that debunking low-effort accusations is asymmetric…
Does anyone understand why people do this? I mean, really why? It's similar to eg climate protestors quoting all kinds of outrageously incorrect statistics as fact, or saying that $TECH can supply "4% of all households" with electricity, fully knowing that households only consume a tiny % of total energy, and so on. I simply don't get it! The political landscape across the west is that there's swaths of people who've…
It has nothing to do with political partisanship (except to the extent that false-flagging happens or that powerful individuals have bad ideas about how to propagandize for their cause). Most people are just terrible at critical thinking, and most of the interesting claims (especially statistical ones) are simply not verifiable by random individuals.
Plenty of leftists have their own reasons to distrust media. But scarcely anyone imagines reasons why someone else would lose trust. Not that they could do anything about it anyway.
The "global left" is not a real thing. I mean, of course you can draw lines around groups any way you like, but this one doesn't offer meaningful insight.
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#113So why a surface sand silo instead of going down and using the soil/clay/bedrock/whatever is there? Ease of installation and maintenance?
They heat it by blowing hot air through it, that needs loose, evenly sized material.
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#114This is super cool but the ending is bizarre. > A comment on the YouTube video below complained, “Not a word about return on investment in the presentation. That means it’ll never pay off” MAGAlomaniacs are everywhere these days. Given the supposed 50+ year lifespan of such a battery, I find it hard to believe it doesn't turn a profit at some point. And I understand that debunking low-effort accusations is asymmetric…
If, say, further insulating your house or building a sand battery will pay for itself in 50 years, it's a bad investment, financially speaking, and probably environmentally speaking as well. You can deploy "the same amount" of resources in something else with a higher ROI, like maybe solar panels with a one -year payback, and get a much bigger benefit. This is an important consideration as long as you are constrained…
Finland is the only country in the world where solar isn't the cheapest form of electricity because they get so little sun and they have good alternatives.
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Majority of people and countries in the world do not deem ROI to be the sole or even primary driver for investment I think this is a little unfair. If it were true, it would be the reason for wealth inequality: you're saying that the majority of people and countries are so financially irresponsible that they consume any resources they get without investing any. But in fact everyone I have observed closely, in every…
> There are 10% opportunities in most people's lives Average S&P total return (reinvesting dividends) is well over 10% over any appreciable timeframe (say 30 years), even during really low times (say buying at the peaks in 1999 or 1972)
The long term average is a bit over 10%, but there are definitely 30-year periods that have fared worse than that.
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#116Finland is still 25% oil for electric generation [1] (and almost 40% fossil fuel). That means a lot of the electricity to heat the sand still comes from oil. It makes me wonder if this is more efficient than just using oil heating. Or some hybrid approach that uses oil to heat the sand. Of course there are other benefits: it's still a good way to level electric generation, which is important for e.g. nuclear plants a…
It is amazing how internet commenters can see some data that appears insane and build an entire post around it. Instead of like, consider, that they have completely misunderstood the data. Confirmation bias much.
Eg that graph is not Finnish electricity usage. It's ALL energy, including cars and planes that still use oil...
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#117Problem here is that if heating was done with electricity itself, it could have like 300% effective efficiency because of using heat pump, but a heat pump can't be used for 500C temperatures, it must be resistive heating. So even if no thermal loss occurs at all, we end up getting a lot, lot less heat than we could do otherwise. It's a lot better to use normal li-ion instead, surely 100 MWh means 500-ton battery and…
In the end it may still make financial sense, the price for electricity often goes down to near zero or even below.
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
People nowadays expect 10% return on their investment, so if you invest 1m you need to make 100k a year from it (120k to cover the deprecation over 50 years) If you made 30k a year for 50 years you'd return 1.5m from your 1m investment, but you're only making 3%, which is a low return especially given the future risk (you'd have to run for 33 years just to get your initial investment back) Either way it's worthwhile,…
> Majority of people and countries in the world do not deem ROI to be the sole or even primary driver for investment It's partially that, other part is that we aren't really pricing in all the externalities of everything out there. So it's not that "there's no ROI", it's that "we aren't factoring things in the ROI calculation". So while a heat battery might not make a huge profit, the ability to burn less fuel (less…
Externalities can (and should) be priced in by taxes that offest negative externalities (e.g. carbon emissions, pollution). Unfortunately, legislative bodies that have to decide on taxes have a much cozier relationship with industry than they do with those who must endure the effects of negative externalities (the general population).
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#119Finland is still 25% oil for electric generation [1] (and almost 40% fossil fuel). That means a lot of the electricity to heat the sand still comes from oil. It makes me wonder if this is more efficient than just using oil heating. Or some hybrid approach that uses oil to heat the sand. Of course there are other benefits: it's still a good way to level electric generation, which is important for e.g. nuclear plants a…
It is amazing how internet commenters can see some data that appears insane and build an entire post around it. Instead of like, consider, that they have completely misunderstood the data. Confirmation bias much. Eg that graph is not Finnish electricity usage. It's ALL energy, including cars and planes that still use oil...
Yeah I was wrong and completely misunderstood the data. I'd edit the post if I could but the timeout for that happened while I was editing. Not sure what confirmation bias I might have: I figured the Fins did their math correctly and was confused about why they were using electric heat.
Anyway, to explain my mistake, the data did not look "insane" to me, it's about right for most countries, and even if it had been correct for Finland the method they described might be favorable (some electric sources need leveling and using extra energy for heat is better than dumping it). Honest mistake, I'm not here with some agenda, and I learned of it by posting.
Anwyay, thanks for the correction! It's amazing (in a good way) that internet communicators can see something that looks plausible, but is wrong, and correct it! You've restored (some of) my faith in the internet.
Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery
#120This is super cool but the ending is bizarre. > A comment on the YouTube video below complained, “Not a word about return on investment in the presentation. That means it’ll never pay off” MAGAlomaniacs are everywhere these days. Given the supposed 50+ year lifespan of such a battery, I find it hard to believe it doesn't turn a profit at some point. And I understand that debunking low-effort accusations is asymmetric…
What does MAGA have to do with Finland?