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World’s largest thermal energy storage to be built in Vantaa, Finland
(www.vantaanenergia.fi)
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Why 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?
Because there is no "simply store" yet. Efficiently storing energy is not really solved. There are lots of snake-oil companies with braindead ideas (like lifting blocks of concrete to build a tower). But heating water and storing it like this seems like a feasible option. Very cool but expensive.. I do hope it works.
They recently built a pilot plant that seems to go way beyond the prototype stage at 100 MWh. This technology obviously still has a long way to go to mainstream adoption, but just writing it off because it seems farfetched is pretty shortsighted.
Well, I'm still sceptic and the marketing driven website low in details doesn't really help. Most of these projects conveniently forget the whole supply chain for the needed resources. But if it works, then great! The more solutions we have the more chance we have as humanity to survive.
Well, they're building the thing. Then they'll be running the thing for a while. Then we'll see if it really works technically and economically.