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World’s largest thermal energy storage to be built in Vantaa, Finland (www.vantaanenergia.fi)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A seasonal thermal energy storage will be built in Vantaa, which is Finland’s fourth largest city neighboring the capital of Helsinki.

The total thermal capacity of the fully charged seasonal thermal energy storage is 90 gigawatt-hours. This capacity could heat a medium-sized Finnish city for as long as a year. Broken down into smaller energy units, this amount of energy is equivalent to, for example, 1.3 million electric car batteries.

The project cost is estimated to be around 200 million euros, and it has already been awarded a 19-million-euro investment grant from Finland’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. Construction of the storage facility’s entrance is expected to start in summer 2024. The seasonal thermal energy storage facility could be operational in 2028.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (17 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (11 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Artificial lakes / Pumped-storage hydroelectricity sounds a lot more reasonable than heating water. And it already exists

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

The problem with pumping is low energy density, especiall when compared to deating water. Heating 1 kg of water by 1°C requires 4186 joules of energy. So to store the same energy by "lifting" water, it would require 4186 j / (1 kg * 9.81 m/s^2) = 426 m of height difference. This value seems unbelievable, but I have triple checked it. And that is only 1 degree of difference, 50 degrees difference would equal 27 km of height difference.

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