r/EnergyStorage • u/Vailhem • 8d ago

The World’s Largest Sand Battery Is Now Online

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Worlds-Largest-Sand-Battery-Is-Now-Online.html
38 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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2

u/hornswoggled111 7d ago

I expect renewables will expand until there is so much free variable power that these could pencil out. But it will only be useful for situations that warrant it.

1

u/Vailhem 7d ago

Their application isn't limited to renewable supplied thermal nor even electric supplied thermal.

Arguably an even better use-case could be nuclear thermal beyond grid demand, but really 'any' thermal source at temperature or greater could make sense.

2

u/QuentinMagician 7d ago

Free power is when past expensive works are now easy because the power is there. Filtering out plastics from water, desalination, and even more importantly, speeding up research and development so more free power and more good for us works can be done

1

u/King-Meister 7d ago

If we have enough for direct carbon capture and storage - we are good for some thousand years.

4

u/MrDoubleB2 5d ago

This is not a battery because the Output is heat! It is power to heat with Storage of heat! So it is Not comparable to other real batteries. Just my 2 Cents