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Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

(cleantechnica.com)
190 points erwinmatijsen | 4 comments | 03 Sep 25 06:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.814s | source
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dguest ◴[03 Sep 25 09:59 UTC] No.45113987[source]▶
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...

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1. happosai ◴[03 Sep 25 11:59 UTC] No.45114708[source]▶
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...

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2. dguest ◴[03 Sep 25 12:04 UTC] No.45114741[source]▶
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.

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3. happosai ◴[03 Sep 25 13:42 UTC] No.45115697[source]▶
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.
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4. dguest ◴[03 Sep 25 16:15 UTC] No.45117520{3}[source]▶
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.