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World’s largest thermal energy storage to be built in Vantaa, Finland
(www.vantaanenergia.fi)
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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?
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.
Artificial lakes / Pumped-storage hydroelectricity sounds a lot more reasonable than heating water. And it already exists
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.