Finland’s radical answer to a renewable energy headache
A Finnish town has implemented a large-scale sand battery to store thermal energy, significantly reducing reliance on fossil fuels for district heating. This technology offers a sustainable alternative to chemical batteries by storing heat generated from renewable sources like wind and solar.
Why it matters
Sand batteries provide a scalable, low-cost solution to the intermittency problem of renewable energy, potentially accelerating the global transition to green heating.
A small town in southern Finland has turned to the world's largest commercial sand battery to fix what many see as the most critical problem facing renewable energy : intermittency .
Standing at 13 meters tall and 15 meters wide, the eye-catching facility uses 2,000 metric tons of crushed soapstone to store clean energy in the form of heat to provide 100 megawatt-hours of thermal energy.
That's enough to provide the 5,000 residents of Pornainen with nearly one month of heat demand through the summer — and roughly one week of demand in the winter.
Commissioned by Finnish district heating company Loviisan Lämpö and developed by Polar Night Energy, the giant sand battery launched last year as part of a push to introduce a flexible heat production technology and reduce carbon emissions generated by the local district heating network.
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