Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

cleantechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 190 posts

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#131

Post by y-curious »

echelon_musk wrote: post #120
arowthway wrote: post #50

This 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?

Unfortunately, people seem to see Boogeymen everywhere when they're terminally online. It's kind of like the mid-2010s where everything someone didn't like was "fascist" or "Nazi"

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#132

Post by anon191928 »

ta1243 wrote: post #58
arowthway wrote: post #50

This 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…

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,…

they print more than %10 each year, LMAO. people are not smart. remember

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#133

Post by rsynnott »

csomar wrote: post #90
arowthway wrote: post #50

This 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…

The battery (am assuming it's just sand and metal) should be very cheap compared to Lithium especially in the places where you generated solar energy (they are hot and have a lot of sand). The problem is: is it profitable to even store energy there? There is no mention beyond "In operation, the sand battery has demonstrated a round trip efficiency of 90 percent.". That doesn't mean much if you do not compare it to Li…

If your house is consuming 100MWh in heating on any reasonable timescale, you, ah, have problems :)

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#134

Post by rsynnott »

dinkblam wrote: post #83
fulafel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher temperature output is a good point, you can't get 400C output for industrial processes from a 100C water based heat battery.

a Blast furnace needs closer to 2000° than 400° in any case, how would you transport high temperatures to the industrial sites? water boils at 100° and few liquids boil above 400°. most liquids will be impractical due to cost or safety (combustibility, toxicity…).

Pump water through, producing steam to drive a turbine, use turbine to generate electricity, use electricity for industrial process.

Now, in practice you _probably_ don't want to do this, because, in this case, you have district heating demand, which is a far more efficient use of the power.

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#135

Post by idiotsecant »

vjk800 wrote: post #106
arowthway wrote: post #50

This 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…

> Given the supposed 50+ year lifespan of such a battery Surely the lifespan is almost forever. It's just a tank full of sand and some heating pipes. Maybe the pipes and/or control electronics needs to be replaced occasionally, but nothing should happen to the sand inside - like ever.

'just' the piping, pumps, control systems, electrical system, valves, instruments...

The sand is the least complex part. Industrial facilities like this take a lot to keep running.

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#136

Post by rsynnott »

davedx wrote: post #81

Good idea but why is it being measured in MW/MWh when it’s not an electrical battery? I know they can be converted but maybe it should be measured in actual thermal units like Btu?

Watts and watt-hours are generally used internationally for heating; the Btu is largely a historical oddity in most places outside the US.

Also it is a mess, as is traditional for US customary units:

> A Btu was originally defined as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one pound of liquid water by one degree Fahrenheit at a constant pressure of one atmospheric unit. There are several different definitions of the Btu that differ slightly.

(Best one is still the fluid oz, tho. A US customary fluid oz is about 29.6ml, a US food labelling fluid oz is exactly 30ml.)

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#137

Post by whimsicalism »

IshKebab wrote: post #128
whimsicalism wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t really know what to say, i wasn’t suggesting that the ground is very conductive of heat - but it is certainly much more conductive than the air is. just search. the reason we wear coats has more to do with convection than the heat conduction of air

I said open air.

convection is orthogonal to conduction/insulation properties and this sand pit is in a silo. i don’t understand how your point is related to the notion that heat would diffuse if we just were heating up the ground

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#139

Post by fulafel »

dinkblam wrote: post #83
fulafel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher temperature output is a good point, you can't get 400C output for industrial processes from a 100C water based heat battery.

a Blast furnace needs closer to 2000° than 400° in any case, how would you transport high temperatures to the industrial sites? water boils at 100° and few liquids boil above 400°. most liquids will be impractical due to cost or safety (combustibility, toxicity…).

Steam?

Re: Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

#140

Post by bryanlarsen »

hulium wrote: post #126
bryanlarsen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Certainly not the only country. Iceland is even more extreme in this regard and unlike Finland it is powered by 100% renewables, hydro and geothermal energy. In Finland the only good renewable alternative is wood/biomass.

Seems reasonable. I'll have to dig up my source to double check. Maybe they just didn't have Iceland data in their set? It's certainly a surprising result to see other non-sunny places like the UK, Germany, Norway & Sweden have solar as their cheapest energy source.
Post reply on HN