This is an idea that has been done before in slightly different ways. A friend of mine built a solarium on the back of his first home. He also built a semi passive heat battery underneath it. The battery was just three feet of pea gravel in an insulated pit under the solarium. On winter days, the solarium would capture much of the sun's heat, and a fan moved that warm air through the gravel and into the house. After the sun went down and the temps began to fall, the warmed gravel would still supply some heat, reducing his gas usage.
@@TheBooban, Maybe Sun Room is a better term? It was basically a porch on the south side of his house that was built like a green house; All glass. The one wall it shared with the house was cinder block, stacked straight and painted black. The fans pulled air from the house through them and blew it into the gravel pit before going into the house. In summer, he would hang a white curtain in front of the block wall.
If they made sand bricks,left an air flow grid between this may be an option, or form sand into hard balls and loose stack ?, The question would be ,does running a fan provide greater heat stored energy,as say have more insulation and running a heat pump ?
@@daleval2182, what is being built is a heat battery. Just about any mass of material will work for this, but by using something with a lot of surface area for it's weight, you can "charge" or "Discharge" the battery faster. A one ton block of concrete will hold as much heat as one ton of pea gravel, but the pea gravel can be warmed up by hot air flowing through it much faster than the block of concrete with air flowing around it. Whether you use it as a source for a heat pump or just as a source of warm air is a matter of time, budget, and skill, if you are doing this yourself.
I built my home to heat AND cool in Arkansas, without any other energy source. The house temperature year round was between 68 to 78 degrees. Heat of sun and coolness of earth transferred by concrete walls and floor and south facing windows. VERY COMFORTABLE!
come back when you can do the same in scandinavia and stick to the building codes.. its a bit more easy to harvest the sun and cool, then it is to save it for heat, when there is little sun im also thinking of moving to the southern europe where stuff like that is easy.. but that doesent make any difference to the nature. the same number of people will still live where its alot harder
I've been to Finland working on energy related projects. From what I saw, home heating in their long cold winters in done via radiators run off of district hot water infrastructure, heated at a central boiler station (i.e. they have hot water piping throughout the city that everyone taps into). The heat source in the place I visited was simply burning wood chips (there are a lot of trees in Finland), which my hosts explained was carbon neutral, as they planted news trees in place of the ones they chopped down.
Wood chips is just one way. There are oil burners. Ground heat pumps. Long distance heat that comes from big plants usually in cities. New individual houses are usually ground heat pumps to floor heating. As floor needs lower heat level so it makes more efficient way for heat pump compressor.
20 years is brief in comparison to coal that are formed hundreds of millions years ago. The trees that are planted with be ready in just a generation or less. Meanwhile, coal that is burned, cannot be replaced because microbes that evolved to break down the wood cellulose didn’t exist during those prehistoric times when the trees fossilised into coal.
That is not even vaguely carbon neutral. Logging and processing trees releases up to three times the carbon content of the tree alone. Newly planted trees in logging projects have a low survival rate and those that survive will take decades to sequester as much carbon as the original tree.
You don't specifically need construction sand for this application, as stated by the Company itself. They can design systems using sand not qualified for construction, as well as some kinds of dirt and gravel mixtures, using the same properties. They just have to account for the mixture when designing the system and ensure it is uniform. They also stated they can also try and utilize places like old quarries as a basis for making these systems instead of making them from silos, both of which can utilize local resources to drive down price lower than their standard approach of silos and sand, which is a choice they made because they are available rather universally. But to make them cheaper per-scenario, engineering them to the situation will probably be cheaper in many situations.
I think Polar Night is prioritizing recycled sand at the moment. But yeah basically any kind of rock sediment. Construction sand just happens to be easy to price by the ton.
Actually cost per KW of Solar powered system is only $0,2 and there is a whole system in village Badnjevac in Serbia, that can provide energy for 2000 homes...
Please note difference between power (kW) and energy (kWh). Power is measured in kW and energy is measured in kWh. 1kW of power for 10 hours uses 10kWh of energy. At 4:04 you use the same unit for both power and energy (100kWh and 8MWh). I assume it can supply up to 100kW of power and has 8MWh of storage. i.e. 80 hours of full power usage.
Yeah! That one took me by surprice, haha. I was like "100 kWh, that's not much" - then he said it can store up to 8 MWh and I got it that the "100 kWh" probably ment it can supply up to 100 kW of heating power.
Finland is not mostly power by natural gas. That is the EU average, but gas contributes to less than 5% of Finnish electricity production. Finland imports energy mostly from Sweden and Norway, neither of which either use much gas. Finland gets no electricity or gas from Russia. That was cut off earlier this year.
For years there has been battery "breakthroughs" every week. This looks like a genuine breakthrough that could be very useful especially with intermittent renewables.
Indeed. This tech seems so simple, cheap and efficient it could be deployed quickly. I could see easily extendable vast arrays of these systems buried underground in the very near future. Maybe even warming up whole Finnish towns in a year or so, as the district heating systems are already in place. There is already excess wind and solar capacity, just direct that to these sand batteries now until electrochemical and mechanical ones ramp up. I see this as a very viable future energy storage solution among others.
@Jo Blow it has specific uses but it's relatively simple technology, easy to construct, uses abundant materials, very long lasting and its ready to go now. Stick these in certain neighbourhoods, manufacturing plants, swimming pools etc and they could store a lot of energy, saving electricity in winter.
@Jo Blow No one is claiming it is an electric power source? And why should it be? In Finland over 25% of all energy consumption goes to heating. And our heating season is long, from around 250 days in south to over 300 days in the north. On top of that things like swimming pools need to be heated year round. Considering that over 50% of homes are heated with district heating those batteries could be literally anywhere and not be an eye sore. Sand is also pretty good insulator, these batteries don't need much if any additional insulation. That first operational battery is literally a metal silo without insulation sitting above ground, and if it works there in -20C weather, it would do very well a few meters under ground (though that would be way more expensive).
As a Finn I need an urge to correct few mistakes made in video and what wasn't taken in account. We used to import a lot of electricity from Russia before the war, where it was produced mostly by hydroelectric power plants owned by Finnish companies. Since the war broke out, we have stopped importing electricity from Russia, sold our power plants and moved on to import what we need from Sweden and Norway, where most of the electricity in produced also by hydroelectric power plants, in Norway like 99% is hydroelectric. We never used to rely too much on natural gas, it is imported here mostly for the needs of heavy industry, and only about 4%(2021) of our electricity comes directly from natural gas and in total energy consumption it has less than 6%(2020) stake. And we are hopefully getting new nuclear power plant (Olkiluoto 3) online during 2022, which will be one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful in the world, which will make us more or less self-sufficient in electricity production. At peak consumption we still need to import some, but that is usually just a week or two during the winter, that is coming. Also unlike anyone else, we have the means of long time disposal/storage of nuclear waste in Onkalo, which is also conveniently located under Olkiluoto nuclear power plants.
I bet you that new plant your talking about will be near or at a river ,why is that? Water dams only work if water is present and in this present ,we need a lot of fresh water for everything,and it's disappearing fast ,nuke plants are a tickin time bommmm
You make no sense, @@808pathfinder. Yes, nuclear plants need water, but they don't consume it. And if more water is needed, what would be better to power a desalinization plant than a nuclear plant?
Also you can use the bi products of said nuclear waste to contribute to nuclear diamonds batteries make cost even lower by making a technological recyclable environment or T.R.E.
I like the price of such a simple idea , domestic hot water is an area that can benefit from this. Preheating the cold water from 55 degrees before it gets to the domestic Vessel. This could be adapted on a small scale for use in apartment complexes, food service etc. Food for thought Good job!
This is what I've been doing for 40 years. I have a 20X4 foot back wall area that I covered with double pane polycarbonate glazing. Inside there's a bunch of 3/8 inch EPDM tubes that circulate water from a 1/10 HP pump. It's just plain tap water without chemicals or antifreeze. Freezing doesn't hurt the EPDM. The water goes into 2 50 gallon polyethylene drums and the cold drinking water picks up the heat through copper dip tubes inside the drums. It heats up to somewhere below 110 degrees, then goes into a regular water heater for storage and final heating. I recently replaced the water heater after 39 years. It mostly loafs along.
That's not correct, it's 80% renewable, not carbon free, but renewables include 20% actual wood burning. Because wood is considered renewable. But burning wood is no hecking way "carbon free".
From a novice about energy production: Since the company has to send the electricity to the end users anyway, is there some reason that a much smaller sand battery could not be developed for individual homes rather than building giant, expensive silos?
Converting the energy back into electricity will induce a huge efficiency loss, you pretty much need to use this directly as hot air or to warm water to like a house radiator temp. I think going back to electricity gets you at like 80% plus efficiency loss.
Scale impacts the ratio of volume to surface area, which is a determining factor in the ability to store heat. A small sand battery cools down very fast while a similar battery scaled bigger retains heat much longer.
@@BtstazWhile true, I believe that they plan on extracting energy at low cost electricity times, such as very low use. This can mitigate some of the efficiency loss cost. I can't wait to see how all of this comes to pass.
Anywhere there is a community heat scheme, like in large areas of New York, this would be perfect. These piped heat arrangements are the norm in densly populated areas in much of Europe. There are also many, many areas that could adopt them. I think this is an incredible innovation and would only need a small group people to make one of these viable, especially if they had a community generation scheme.
I'm so glad you got around to covering this. I mentioned it a few months back. After I saw coverage from Finland and I was just in love with the concept of how simple and cohesive it is to our current environment. I just love inventions like that. Also, not every method and idea is ment to work for "every option" but it will be Really good at what's it's good at. So it's totally worth it if you interconnect it to your city planning system properly.
@@manofsan I plan on running mine with a PowMr 5,000 watt inverter / controller / charger by PowMr. It will run on a small battery pack, with 8 each golf cart batteries from Costco, $100 each and 1,200 watts each at 48 VDC. I am installing a 12,000 Btu 120 volt unit from Amazon. Mine will have a 1,100 watt load on the inverter in the heat mode and slightly less in the cooling mode. These inverter heat pumps are really easy on their power supply, and not a sudden power like a one speed compressor.
This is a perfect example of how a combination of technologies is how we get there. It's not a one size fits all solution, but hugely useful if used right. 🙂
Great video! I remember being fascinated, as a child, by the way sand retains heat, it was something that I had definitely noticed, because I lived adjacent to a sandy seashore. I think these sand batteries are an amazing adaptation of a natural resource to store energy. The batteries could also have cladding to enhance their retention of energy.
Using sand as a large scale heat sink is both a simple and a grand idea. The solution to many problems is sometimes found right in front of us, and in this case, under our feet. Well done!
As a Finn, I would appreciate if you checked the natural gas consumption statistics before saying that we use natural gas ”for most part to power the grid”. We were at 6% of total energy consumption in 2020 and it is just getting lower. New nuclear power plant and relatively large wind farms being completed should help us being energy independent, but next winter will be horrible for energy prices for sure. Geothermal heated homes won’t be influenced too heavily though.
@@kkarllwt not yet at least, probably need to mix in solar energy too during the summer times. Nuclear energy is a pragmatic choice in the green transition too.
The same idea used in clay pots over a candle to put out radiant heat, except you have much more mass. I believe there is a coefficient number that is associated the amount of heat certain substances a can radiate. Moisture also makes a difference. We can also heat the sand using, solar, circulating water or eutectic salts, or heat by wood or other vegetation. A great idea to substitute different means of storage, rather than getting stuck on chemical reactions.
The clay pot thing is a scam. You don't get more heat out than what a candle normally puts out. It stores a tiny bit, but you could get rid of the pot and have light too.
Simple diy... 55 gallon barrel of sand in basement of house. Mixed into sand is heating element. heat the sand with pv during day. Let barrel cool down over night. Doesn't really help in places like Finland where they have 6 week long nights in winter... Much cheaper to operate than trying to run electric heat off of batteries though.
@@crcurran I would start with a longer stainless-steel heating element coated in silicone rubber. Something like the Frost King HC30a. Directly wired to a fuse, and about 300 watts of PV panel. The thermostat would have to be disabled, because the DC current will burn it out rapidly. You are correct though you would want to start much smaller than 55 gallon drum . Maybe start the experiment in a 5 gallon pail instead? Scale up from there.
@@shitina.bucket9699 Im too cheap for a copper tank, empty 55 gallon drums and 5 gallon paint pails are cheap to free. Sustainable solar energy is only going to work out if everyone is as cheap as possible. Too many check book problem solvers in the industry right now.
A 55 gallon drum is significantly smaller than what they are talking about, or what would be required in most applications. The most efficient source of heat would be hot water from solar not electric , in addition, the same hot water tubes could be used when circulating the heat back out. Heating with electric heaters would be more expensive than just buying overpriced gas. The heat storage benefit of sand comes from the fact that it does not transfer heat easily. It is a lot easier to heat up water than the same volume of sand. In the reverse, you can not draw that heat out very fast either. This concept is best suited for heating a home gradually over time, not for electrical production or boiling hot water extraction.
This tech is beneficial to all places. The heat from the sand can heat water that can be pumped into homes and buildings. Hot water is nice to have even in Southern California. Fun fact: heat is normally what makes something inefficient but resistive heating is 100% efficient because the goal is to create heat.
This system would also would work using air (from a greenhouse) thru flexible 4" pipe or water thru 1' Pex using evacuated solar tubes. If the tank /container was super insulated, heat created and stored in the summer could provide heat for the fall and early winter.
We need this scaled to heat individual homes in areas without district heating,but it would have to be only with a huge sand silo,which probably rules out most suburban homes. Maybe bury the heavily insulated silo when building new homes? Generate the heat from solar/wind,with resistance wire in the sand,and you can store heat for cold winter days. Then again,for detached housing,forget it and install geothermal heating/cooling.
Those who died in Texas energy grid collapse died of family neglect I was there & have been thru many hurricanes & snowy/icy winters. The storm highlighted the weakness in our culture of people having no survival skills or preparations.
Sand heat storage is a proven component in passive solar home heating. Large reservoirs of sand absorb southern exposure sun during the day and radiate slowly at night. Not an electrical solution, but it exploits the same thermal mass quality of sand.
Why is electricity even needed for this sand battery? Why not just use solar thermal instead of solar photoelectric? There'll be less losses, with nearly all the heat being channeled into the sand battery for storage.
Thanks for this video - love it. Scandinavia seems to be on the cutting edge of reason, with great exploration of global game changing yet simple technology- without the bastardized, lobbyist-polluted political dynamics that we see in the US.
This tech is amazing. If that would be put on an output of a heat pump it would collect heat when its 40 deg c outside and release it when it's -20. To make it efficient when small it could be buried underground. Add to that excess energy from pvs and off grid house would be possible even in Finland.
I like the idea of each house having its own Sand Battery silo. Feed heat or electricity into it when things are working well, and heat (and perhaps a small amount of electricity) is available during a crisis. The idea needs to be developed a bit further, but I think the Proof of Concept town shows we're well on the way. I'm thinking this could have use in a large O'Neil Cylinder space station.
That's good for energy independence, but bad for efficiency, think about the insulation in the silo wall, that's proportional to the silo surface area (power of 2 function), whereas the heat storage is proportional to the volume inside (power of 3 function). The more you increase the silo size, the more favorable the ratio of its volume against its surface is, which means more energy stored inside, and less energy lost through the insulation layer.
@@Groaznic that's why in this project storage is small and insulation takes almost all of the volume. Still it's economically viable option especially for retrofits.
@@bzuidgeest everything is more efficient when bigger. Economy of scale. Yet we live in times when access to grid power is not guaranteed anymore. People died in Texas because of cold. Grid was down.
Soapstone is particularly good at holding and slowly releasing thermal energy. Soapstone is essentially super compressed talc. I don't know the prices per metric ton, but it is fairly cheap--maybe not for giant, industrial use like this, but certainly could be applied to home use. Just need a way to really compress the talc, and get out as much of the air as possible (and get the particles as close to each other as possible).
You're incorrect about TX. MOST of the pipes that broke, broke at OUTSIDE water sources like external hot water tanks and ordinary water spigots with shutoff valves flush with the outside. This is where the vast majority of the pipes broke. These alternative heat sources may help in these rare events, but if they wouldn't invest in ANY winterization of their wind turbines, why would they invest in this?
I am going to build a home. I own land in West Texas. Something that can be done relatively cheaply is Geothermal. And once it is installed, it can be almost free to run. This version will cost literally pennies per week to operate. Pumping water about 10 feet underground and bringing it back at about 55 degrees, year around can be a true game changer. Of course there is more to it than that but that is the basic idea. I would love to discuss it with you.
It seems like the silos could also be made to heat themselves via passive solar. If they had a “greenhouse” sleeve with a 2” gap around the east, south and west sides and insulation on the north side, the silo would be heating from outside in as well as inside out from the excess PV/wind. Great job, excellent overview.
I've had this idea for a while, only I would dig down. How much energy could you store in one cubic KM of earth? You could use wind and solar energy to heat one area and pump winter cold into another. You would have a vast potential difference.
It sucks. The ground is an infinite heat sink at the average temperature in your area. You could use a heat pump to warm in the winter and cool in the summer, but trying to use it as a storage for off-peak heat is going to waste a lot.
I love this channel and a lot of it's content. That being said I need to point out that this idea for heat storage is certainly not new. In the 70's there were Popular Electronics Magazine and Modular Home articles that discussed how people were using an ancient gravel and sand heat storage. In these articles the sand or gravel was built into or below the foundation of a home. The heat was stored by hot water solar, electric, or even hot air. Heat removal was air or water. I you are going solar, it is a great idea, because heating your home is a huge load on real battery storage. In fact , I am a little perplexed as to why they would call it a Battery at all, possibly a sales gimmick. Storing this above ground is a waste of space and makes the concept less efficient due to losses to the atmosphere. Except for the plumbing, there is no reason that this would ever wear out. To compare it to Tesla batteries and claim a longer lifespan leads me to believe the company is implying a maintenance plan. For all intent and purpose this is a near surface heat pump system, not a Battery at all, unless you consider what this company is trying to do to your pocket book. I see this as a cheap marketing ploy and quite possibly a scam. I am sorry, while I am not going to Dislike this video, I can't Like it, and I can't believe you were taken in by this. Though the idea may be useful to already built structures, there is no reason for it to take up space above ground, is absolutely not a new idea, and is not a Battery.
What happened in Texas wasn't just because of high demand due to the extended freeze. Many power plants service their plants during the winter months because the typical winter demand is much lower. So, some power generation was offline. Their was also the complication that power plants were not designed for a prolonged freeze cycle and because of the typically mild winters, especially in the central and southern portions of the state, they failed or were incapable of full production. The state is still trying to get a handle on all the inadequacies of the grid and making the needed repairs and upgrades so the grid does not collapse again if another prolonged freeze occurs.
The biggest biggest problem that most homes aren't insulate super well. I help someone insulate there walls R-63, ceiling trust R-100 and roof trust R-100 with radiate barrier and super super high efficient foam and windows. They reduce there cooling and heating cost by almost 100%. In the summer time the only time they run there AC when it reaches 120F outside. In the winter time they run there gas heater for 3-5 mins and keeps the home warm for 7-10 days.
It’s obvious this technology has great potential, I’m left curious if the cost of extracting this ‘sand heat’ and delivering the same can outweigh comparative total energy cost? Hey; bought the ‘Fannttix X8 Portable Air Compressor’ to help maintain my RV and Jeep, when traveling. Your discount code was a great saving. Thank you.
Best thing about this? Uses only existing tech, plus the sand is RECYCLED building sand, they can use whatever quality. Any location with district-level heating should build this - heat it up while electricity is cheap or use waste heat from whatever source, distribute it in standalone or hybrid mode when there is demand.
I really hope this and other innovative energy savers come to fruition on personal and industrial scale. I see guys on RU-vid testing how hot they can get sand but they are very basic experiments and most don't show them attempting to draw the heat for increasing air temperature of rooms or a house. Many aspects appear to be undetermined, such as how truly effective these techniques are in various setups. There are many possible areas where efficiency might be greatly impacted such as insulation of the sand, method of heating, method of drawing heat, air circulation in the target rooms, and circulation of the target rooms.
Just raise the glass pane above standard solar panels a couple inches, by increasing the solar panel's frame width. In this way, one not only generates electricity from the sun, but also captures the black body radiation emitted from those black solar cells. The hot air can then be circulated through an aggregate thermal mass using a fan powered by a fraction of the electricity generated.
What about heating the sand using off-peak electricity in a home that incorporates a floor heating system? Circulate the water for the floor heating system through the sand. Use resistance heating to heat the sand directly. Switch off the electric during peak hours and relay on built up heat in the sand to heat the water.
i think the issue is that the larger the system the more efficient it becomes do to energy loss being a function of volume. that’s why they want large volume silos.
@@kkarllwt I was thinking along the lines of an electric hot water tank filled with sand with the water plumbing passing through the tank. The heat source for the water would be the sand on a continuous basis but the heating elements would cut-off when the electric went to peak. Ordinary electric heating elements used in water heaters may have to be throttle back to prevent them from burning out in the less conductive sand. Nonetheless, a little DIY internet research would find all the data needed to size the actual tank and the number of elements as well as the means by which to prevent early element failure.
Any ideas for an efficient way to convert the stored heat energy into electricity (turbines/etc)? If that could be solved, maybe sand batteries would be a viable grid-scale storage system anywhere that has a significant percentage of intermittent renewables (wind/solar).
Smaller sand batteries for individual homes could be place at the center of compost piles and this would keep it hot needing only to replace the compost in early autumn using grass clippings and fallen leaves.
The problem with this system is that most solids don't keep exuding enough heat to be viable power generation sources. No matter how big the building, the power required to heat up the solid is far more than any energy you would get out.
It's not a "conflict" in Ukraine - how you mentioned in video, it's - Russian war invasion into Ukraines borders. Naming things correctly - it's a good tone rule, at least.
I come from a former Soviet occupied country. We have an old stove, produced in Russia, that stores electricity as heat with the help of special bricks that retain heat. You put it up for a few hours at night and then turn it off during the day and you heat this way your home for the next day.
The sand battery works as long as you have a means of making excess energy like if the wind blows all the time or the powerplants never run out of coal. It would be better to custom design each of these systems using what works best in the area. Solar heating on individual homes using mirrors and black absorbing water tanks works wonders and there is no heat exchange issue, the hot water goes directly to the walls of the house and return a little cooler and this will last all night but have a week of cloudy days and neither water nor sand would work. Solar will work a little on a cloudy day but not enough to heat your house. A wood burning fireplace could make up the difference because the sun has been growing those old trees for decades and if we don't burn them or make lumber out of them they will rot in the forest and give off methane and Co2 anyway, so it is okay to burn some of it when needed. Reliable power seems to be the root issue, not how to store it. Sand on such a scale sounds great but the heat exchange must travel a long ways through insulated tubing to warm a building, no doubt underground. My father used large volcanic rocks to bask in the sunroom and absorb heat to help keep the house ajoined to it warm in the winter time, the sun was always finding its way to the black rocks and it helped.
Question, what kind of sand does this take? Is the rough course sand is used in construction and concrete or the fine and smooth sand from oceans and African deserts? If it’s the latter that could help reduce Brine when we desalinate our waters
Salt might be a better solution for this application. I hear that salt is used in solar power plants to keep generating power for a certain number of hours after the sun has set.
Building these into homes might be a good use. In Finland for half the year the most common use of power is to produce heat. So producing electricity, storing it as heat in the sand, transforming it back to electricity to send to homes where it will be transferred back to heat is more attenuation than the system needs to have. Instead produce the electricity, send it to a sand battery in the home where it can later be released as either electricity or directly as heat.
Decades ago I saw a show about an architect in the mountains in Denver who used evacuated tube solar collectors to heat a glass mansion and dump the remaining energy into a year round outdoor hot tub. I want to build an ICF house with in floor heat then build an out building shop with the south facing wall covered in evacuated tube solar collectors. Pump water through them and into a reservoir in the garage. From there it can be distributed to the house, slab in the garage, heated driveway and sidewalk, water heater etc. On demand. ICF homes have high insulation value, sealed external envelope, and extremely high thermal mass so even if you go a period without significant sun it takes over 2.5 weeks to induce a significant temperature fluctuation in the house. Could heat the entire house in -40F weather for just the electricity required to run a pump periodically.
I'd be interested to see a domestic version of this using solar/wind or just cheap-rate electricity. Maybe replacing the hot water tank to provide hot water and central heating systems. Perhaps even a thermoelectric system off the back of this too.
reminds me of old storage heaters that used cheap overnight electricity to heat bricks (sand based) in the heaters which then released the heat later...
The sand battery is a great idea and could be incorporated into heating and cooling, water heaters, heat pumps... In the winter instead of using the coil from your air source heat pump, the heat pump could use your ground coil where you have been pumping heat in all summer and become much more efficient. This would require smarter heat pumps that know which coil to use. Radiant heat such as boilers could incorporate radiators filled with sand that keep Heating after the boiler has stopped. Excess energy from solar could be pumped into the ground to heat the sand so you can use it to heat your house. This brings into play one of your other their videos with the smart panel. It can also be accomplished with smarter inverters that distribute the extra power to heat the sand. Great video as usual. Keep up the good work!
I found it amazing that you didn’t mention the original sand battery which would be 55 gallon drums painted with a dark paint on the north side of any passive solar dwelling they can be filled with sand or gravel but usually the gravel would have to have the minus component to have a continuous conductive interior. They simply absorb the sun‘s rays during the day and let heat off at night. Even ancient Rome figured out how to build cities giving each house passive solar energy not sure why it’s so tough for us today.
I used to have a home that faced south, and it had a cement porch and a cement surrounded flower bed. on a sunny day, the cement stored heat and released it at night. My flowers would stay warm and grow when others' would freeze.
Could you do a hybrid system of geothermal and sand so you use the geothermal to heat the sand up ? Just a thought just imagine large sand batteries close to volcanoes or geothermal events ??
You could, but it wouldn't make much sense, geo thermals is essentially an infinite heat source already, you wouldn't want to store that heat unless you absolutely had too due to efficiency losses.
yeah it does, but it boils off at just 100C so its potential to hold energy is limited. great question though... and water does have a part to play for sure
Here in southern Wisconsin we have a foundry that used to be a filthy black place. Over the years many updates have been installed, I am not even sure they burn coke anymore.They heat the iron to the melting point with electric furnaces. Very seldom are the doors closed even in winter. I wish I could capture the heat from this plant to heat my home. Sounds like a sand battery might be a good option, maybe we could get the lumber producer to capture some from their kilns, even the plastic injection factory could add to a sand battery.
I live in cold climate New England and heat 80% and 95% of my hot water using vacuum tube type hot water solar panel. I have hot water passing Thur 2 ft deep sand bed under house slab (hydronic system) . Summer, I heat the pool along with hot water tank. The reason I don’t add more solar collectors and provide 100% of heat is that many days during winter I would make house tow warm. I have minisplit that backs up this system in very cold days.
I'm getting so sick of technology "reporters" on RU-vid peddling bullshit and then creating click bait titles that are completely orthogonal to reality. Unsubscribed
Something I was thinking about is using the sand to store "cold" as in cool the sand with a heat pump powered by solar and use it like that in the summer. Could be a way to get more use out of it in places that actually have seasons😄 (Yes I know cold is a lack of heat energy but that's the best way I can think to explain)
Interesting idea. SInce it's summer, you probably have the AC on during the day, so you have AC. And you have solar, in this concept. You could just use batteries and run that same AC at night, and save on the system you'd need to distribute the sand's coldness to cool the house, and the second unit - the heat pump running during the day to cool the sand while the AC is cooling the house. Unless one larger unit could cool the house AND the sand, then you're cooking - most of the ductwork exists, just need some servos and blowers. If one unit could do both, I would want to know how much bigger (and $$$) it would need to be over a just getting a battery system, to know which makes more sense. Probably a bigger unit. Now think about geothermal.
The first thing you forget is needing a DISTRICT HEATING / COOLING SYSTEM, which my memory says San Diego, St. Paul, Harrisburg, ... do have Municipal District Heating Systems. A District Heating System connects a group of buildings by insulated underground piping. The pipes are used for steam supply and return condensate. A central heating plant produces the steam by boilers reheating the condensate. There have been gas-fired, electric, ... boilers that can heat stored energy as sand, bricks, water, salt, and more. Empty "dome formations" in Michigan, Ohio, Louisiana, ... are used to "store" natural gas as a buffer for high winter demand, to store compressed air for electric generation by gas turbines, ... The District Heating System is not common in North America, typically only in large city center for government buildings.
When i walk out my front door there is a sidewalk with the block garage wall running next to it. The sun hits that wall from 2 pm till sunset. After the sun sets and i go out at night, i can feel the wall radiating heat that was captured in the day as i walk down the side walk.
ONE of the best and cheapest energy is to use sulfuric acid reacting with plain water. This can make heat over and over again. Old school is way better than new school, PERIOD.
In Europe there is a massive shortage of gas, the price is sky high, anything which would help in the winter is a good idea. I think calling sand a battery is a poor idea. Most people think of electricity - this is more a "night storage heater" which were popular in the UK 20 years ago. They were radiators with bricks in which you heated up at night on low price electricity and that kept your home warm during the day. The downside was by the evening they had often run out of heat.
Just came across "sand batteries" and "water batteries" today. This can truly be a game changer but the info I've seen on youtube or from companies scratching the surface, is either very crude or not the best use of the tech. So many ideas just hit from discovering this. Super cool. Ancient Egyptians just may have had something going on with those pyramids and all that sand ;)
While 'breakthrough' is a stretch, this could be a valuable passive heating method for off-grid homesteads, supplemented by a wood stove or other source, and could be a good backup 'survival' heating method for on-grid homes in a grid down situation, as noted in the video.
IN the US, only about 30% of glass is recycled, the rest going to landfills. Glass can be crushed and ground back into sand. If repurposed for the sand battery, it could eliminate 5% of the solid waste in landfills. Yes, it would probably cost more than mined sand, but probably a little more friendly to the environment.
Sand batteries can also heat water, and that is a big deal everywhere, for bathing, laundry, pools and hot tubs, and cleaning, and hot water pipes in the floor is the absolute best way to heat a home. Space heating is almost half of our energy usage in the US, and is important for some industrial processes such as drying food, drying building materials such as wood and bricks, and also keeping green houses at the best temperature for food production. Also if thermoelectric generators (TEG) can be improved, sand batteries may even work for generating electricity.
It would be interested to eventually see thermal batteries eventually paired with heat pumps. Resistive heaters are only 100% efficient. Heatpumps can be several times as efficient. Use the input power to mainly run an air compressor and heat pump that is cooling the compressor and gas. The heat is directed to the thermal battery and the liquified air can be stored for when cooling is needed. Then release the compressed gas for cooling. It would be best if there was a heat pump with a high temperature phase change material that would have a liquid state below 100C and a gas state of at least several hundred C or higher. Gallium seems a little interesting since it melts under 40C, but it won't vaporize until 2400C, even sand would be melted before it reached it's vapor point.
Maybe one day we will take a 40 year step backwards and rediscover compressed air as the best energy storage , no chemicals , giant battery piles, or complicated systems.
One thing to be corrected here as Polar Night Energy don't used resistance heaters inside pipe loops instead heat is generated outside of silo and air is circulated in close loop piping to heat up the sand. hope it may support.
As a scientist told me recently we have the cleanest environment in history. The fossil record says so he said. He said if this is true then why is is it getting hotter? He told me, much like a magnifying glass used to start a fire it only makes heat if the glass is clean . He said basically our atmosphere is too clean . I believe him.
Pretty sure Texas failed because they were forced to convert to wind power and those specific mills weren’t designed for the cold. They didn’t over strain the system the system was flawed. We need to understand that alternative power is essential but we need to convert over responsibly at a save pace.
The heat stored in the sand batteries, if the sand temperatures are high / hot enough, can be turned back into electricity -- by heat transfer to water .... to steam, to drive a steam turbine, you know, the turbine ferry. basically a thermal power plant run not by burning fossil fuel, but using theheat stored in the sand. The thing to explore there would be the proportion of energy loss in the transfers, ergo, the resultant LCOS of the electricity derived. Ricky, I wish you would talk to Tommi and / or Markku at Polar Night Energy and explore this. Please also discuss the possibility of using Waste Heat Recovery technologies to source the heat energy to heat the sand in the sand batteries.
You missed part of the problem for the Texas freeze out. Alternative energy (windmill and solar) went off line. With conventional energy generation failure resulting from extreme conditions, there was a insufficient amount of conventional generation available
Before I watch your video, I will say storing energy in the sand is a pipe dream. I am 80 YO and I remember the carburetor getting 200 miles per gallon, cold fusion, batteries that last a thousand years. Listening to all of the new energy sources is like listening to a woman say, "I will love you forever." Actually, the hookers in Viet Nam were more honest when they said, "two dolla, I love you long time." of course, long time was maybe 20 minutes. But, for a 20-year-old, 20 minutes is plenty of time.
We used to have ovens like that. At nighttime when electricity was cheaper People would heat them up to consume the head on daytime. When those night tariffs disappeared also this sand stoves did. - still a good thing. But, as constructions is actually a rare resource one may could use desert sand when scaling up. One could also use bundled sunlight to heat them up?
I think it's funny that we're now just about finished taking down all the silos from another generation and now we are going to start putting them backup again. 🙂🙃😉
1 Heat pumps are not efficient at low temperatures, and what is the power plant burning to make electricity? 2 trees are a carbon battery, virtually all the carbon in plants, trees, come from the hated CO2. 3 Sand is cheap and will, like any other massive object, store large amounts of heat. Retaining said heat is a challenge. 4 direct solar heat is more efficient than electrically produced heat. The rub comes when you need solar heat it's cold and days are short. 5 surplus electrical power can be stored locally by heating water, again, insulation is critical. 6 I wish the sand battery experiment the best of success, I hope we find it to have fulfilled expectations and bless those with the much needed heat. 7 very nicely produced program, you are easy to listen to.
In the USA my thought is for industrial heat. I know an engineer in a Florida production plant that is getting rid of the natural gas hot water system and going electric. (they use a LOT of hot water for cleaning food grade equipment) If they could buy cheap electricity and store it in a sand battery, massive advantage. For industry electricity cost is very sensitive to peak demand, this could be a "base demand."
There are several errors in your statements about that Texas power grid issue when the polar vortex smacked them, You failed to mention that the people that built the grid there as well as the wind turbines for texas, cut corners to pocket the savings and didn't build them with the intention of Cold Winter usage as they expected the temperatures of Texas to stay above freezing. When they didn't build to code by not applying the necessary cold weather parts such as wind turbine deicers or the necessary grade of wiring to handle cold, al it took was that polar vortex to prove that they cheated the entire state of Texas (and some parts of Oklahoma, but that didn't get near the coverage). The worst part of the whole thing was that on the average, Texas homes are not insulated to the degree of homes further north (Some not at all), So the slightest breeze will draw any heat built up in the homes right out Which is good for the hot summer months, but when the freak cold weather comes, it really sucks.. So even managing to get heat from Running Generators, Kerosene (not sure of the availability of that fuel.) heaters, lamps, or otherwise, The lack of Winter preparations from builders of Texas homes, got many people killed as they didn't ever expect to have to deal with such a situation. Basically what I am saying, a bunch of Sand batteries in the grid would not have helped Texas in that situation as the entire grid, regardless of renewables or otherwise energizing that grid, would have just been a tube full of hot sand that wouldn't have helped anyone as the wires, substations, transformers and such were going down due to the people in charge of the grid being so cheap. Now obviously a sand battery doesn't rely on the grid for it to store power. However Texas is a vast state, so the piping for such a setup would be better off set at a per property (or per block in cities) and even then, there has to be some sort of means to move that energy around to and from the sand. could it have helped? Maybe, but it would have taken a means (fluid, Thermometric, something) to move that heat from the sand as I am assuming that Electricity is not being stored in the sand, but heat. Then you have to consider that big tubes of sand would look kinda gaudy and many cities residents would call them eye sores. but what's a little ugly when it comes to being the "wave of the future?" Note I'm not bashing the idea of using sand to store energy, I'm bashing the usage of that tragic event for residents of Texas and parts of Oklahoma where their homes and grid were poorly prepared for such an event due to so many corners cut that lead to a perfect storm of a disaster. Yes it was a disaster, but I doubt that a sand battery collection would have helped as a bunch of Sand will only hold heat for so long and that Polar vortex stayed in place for quite a while.
Downtown San Diego used to rely on district steam heat. I don't know that any buildings use it now. Even a warm place like where we live uses heat but it would definitely be a great thing to use in colder areas that have lots of wind energy.
In sandy desert we could have modules on shipping containers that make the concrete bricks that would make the concrete silos it would make the generating power because they would hold the sand in a tower
After 30 years in San Diego, I can testify that there is a need for heating homes in the winter. We used gas. In the interest of cost savings and green house gases we often let the interior temperatures get uncomfortably low in the winter and didn't have the right window exposure to take advantage of solar heating. Granted, there is not a way to distribute heat from centralized sand batteries, but if I could bury large cistern of sand in the yard and slowly charge it up using a few solar panels on the roof? That would be a great way to get self sufficient for heat. If there was enough capacity it could also be used for heating water. And for new construction it would be relatively easy to put a large sand battery under the slab.
Or in sunny SD, just build the interior walls of masonry and use solar panels to heat air and warm the walls . I have 3 4 by 8 air heating solar panels on my house. Upper midwest.
I bet there are industrial users of heat in San Diego. Everything from a bakery, through heat processing, plastics forming, industrial drying etc. etc. I recall seeing a pie chart, showing heat as the largest single sector of industrial energy use.
Rather than sand, or any other passive mass, You need to pick a phase change material that operates within the heat range of your storage system. Something like tin for example. A phase change stores much more heat as latent heat. The beauty of using a phase change is you have more heat that can be stored, and by choosing a phase change at a useful temperature you enhance how much heat you can get back out. This is the problem with sand or other thermal mass, the cooler it gets the harder it is to get more of the power out. If you use a medium like water, it is possible to move the heat around. The steam boiler is an example of this. So sand is cheap, but unless you can melt it, you will never store much energy. Something like tin could be melted and in the process store MUCH more energy that is MUCH easier to get back out. Substitute just about any non-toxic material for the tin with similar results. Pick a temperature range you want to operate at, and pick a phase change material that operates in that range. 80 times better than sand. To bail texas out of snowmageddon would have required every house to have a sand battery twice the size of the house... Or a phase change battery the size of a car... which is more practical or more likely?
Most the grid is used for HEATING. At least a big part during winter. Like you was saying northern and mountains get more snow and have longer winters so need more HEAT. All heat is, is another form of energy. I think this is a great idea for the ppl that have longer winters but the southern tropics etc not so much. Like the guys said in the video he lived in TX for 30yrs. That was a fluke and you know it. When I was a child it did snow more in the south. I remember sliding down hills in my town and getting out of school for it etc. not so much anymore.
This is very old technology that they did not find. Many homes in the north have huge amounts of sand put under them with pipes woven in. Once fall starts coming the start pumping fluid into the sand under the house being heated by solar water heaters. They do this as long as the sun is up. Once winter gets there the amount of heat under the house is huge and helps keep it warm all winter while it still heats when the sun is up.
