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A Finnish town is heating itself with 2,000 tonnes of crushed rock: its giant “sand battery” can cover almost a month of heating demand and has cut district heating emissions by 70% (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I bet it could, same principal and application. Take heat from homes during the day and apply at night. Problem only swaps from "do we have enough to make it through the night" to "do we have enough capacity to make it through the day"

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Take heat from homes

    That's the tricky part.

    This sand battery works by offsetting the production of heat to be used in an already existing district heating system.

    That system does not easily change into a district cooling system. It is simply not built to run in reverse. Every part of it from production through distribution, exchanging and in-house distribution are made with one purpose: To transfer heat in one direction.

    It makes sense to use renewable energy to charge this battery, so they don't need as much fossil fuel or whatever they use normally.

    But, if we were to make a district wide hvac-system the same way, it would probably be better and more efficient to simply use individual airconditioners using the renewable energy directly.

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