Less complaining, more innovation
Strides are being made everywhere by those ill content with armchair quarterbacking the world.
Sometimes it’s not sunny enough to depend on solar power, or windy enough to turn the windmill. So, Finnish researchers have devised a year-round, 24/7 energy source: a battery made from sand.
Markku Ylönen and Tommi Eronen are the young engineers who came up with the idea of building a sand battery. They founded a company called Polar Night Energy to develop their concept. Now, they’ve installed their first sand battery in the Vatajankoski power plant in Kankaanpää, a town in southwest Finland.
So how do you build a sand battery? Polar Night poured 100 tons of low-grade builder’s sand into a silo. Then they charged the sand battery with cheap solar or wind energy until it’s 500 degrees Celsius. As anybody who’s ever burnt their soles on a hot beach knows, sand stores heat very well. Polar Night’s plan is in its name: they want to use that hot sand to warm homes and other buildings through Finland’s long, cold winter nights.
In Habitat
Markku Ylönen and Tommi Eronen are the young engineers who came up with the idea of building a sand battery. They founded a company called Polar Night Energy to develop their concept. Now, they’ve installed their first sand battery in the Vatajankoski power plant in Kankaanpää, a town in southwest Finland.
So how do you build a sand battery? Polar Night poured 100 tons of low-grade builder’s sand into a silo. Then they charged the sand battery with cheap solar or wind energy until it’s 500 degrees Celsius. As anybody who’s ever burnt their soles on a hot beach knows, sand stores heat very well. Polar Night’s plan is in its name: they want to use that hot sand to warm homes and other buildings through Finland’s long, cold winter nights.
In Habitat
