Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

Finland is still 25% oil for electric generation [1] (and almost 40% fossil fuel). That means a lot of the electricity to heat the sand still comes from oil. It makes me wonder if this is more efficient than just using oil heating. Or some hybrid approach that uses oil to heat the sand.

Of course there are other benefits: it's still a good way to level electric generation, which is important for e.g. nuclear plants and wind power.

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

Most of that is not for generating electricity as it includes transport and heat. Direct heating of homes traditionally used oil, wood and pellets, same as other Nordic countries. This is slowly being replaced with heat pumps that mainly use electricity from wind, water, nuclear or solar (not so much solar in Finland though).

> Finland is still 25% oil for electric generation [1] (and almost 40% fossil fuel). That means a lot of the electricity to heat the sand still comes from oil.

This is not a valid conclusion. Battery projects like this are gonna charge/heat up when the electricity price is low, electricity price is low when supply/demand ratio is high and this often happens when renewable electricity is most available and makes up a disproportionate share of the electricity mix.

Edit: Your graph is not what you say it is, this shows primary energy (i.e. includes fuel/heating/...), not "electric generation". Electricity in Finland is mostly nuclear, wind, hydro and certainly not "40% fossil fuel".

95% of Finnish electricity is clean: nuclear, wind, hydro, renewable biomass. Oil 0.3%, coal 1.5%, net import of electricity 3.8% (most of it clean also).

Older private homes still use oil for heating. All new use electric, heat pumps, or geothermal heat pumps.

The point of these types of systems is that you can store energy when it is cheap to do so (there is an abundance of wind and/or solar energy) and use it later.

It is amazing how internet commenters can see some data that appears insane and build an entire post around it. Instead of like, consider, that they have completely misunderstood the data. Confirmation bias much.

Eg that graph is not Finnish electricity usage. It's ALL energy, including cars and planes that still use oil...

Yeah I was wrong and completely misunderstood the data. I'd edit the post if I could but the timeout for that happened while I was editing. Not sure what confirmation bias I might have: I figured the Fins did their math correctly and was confused about why they were using electric heat.

Anyway, to explain my mistake, the data did not look "insane" to me, it's about right for most countries, and even if it had been correct for Finland the method they described might be favorable (some electric sources need leveling and using extra energy for heat is better than dumping it). Honest mistake, I'm not here with some agenda, and I learned of it by posting.

Anwyay, thanks for the correction! It's amazing (in a good way) that internet communicators can see something that looks plausible, but is wrong, and correct it! You've restored (some of) my faith in the internet.

I think the primary energy does include electric generation, but you're right, I posted the wrong chart. The correct one is here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-s...

and it backs up your point. Sorry to any Fins I might have offended with my lazy post.

Cheers! For the record 25% of electricity from oil is "insane" for any place that isn't a small island or failing 3rd world country.

Yeah thanks for pointing this out: I'd been confusing energy consumption with electricity generation for a while. Turns out that even countries that I thought were using oil for electricity (e.g. the US) were just using it for transportation / petrochemical.

I guess oil is too valuable to just burn.