Finnish City Inaugurates 1 MW/100 MWh Sand Battery

This is super cool but the ending is bizarre.

> A comment on the YouTube video below complained, “Not a word about return on investment in the presentation. That means it’ll never pay off” MAGAlomaniacs are everywhere these days.

Given the supposed 50+ year lifespan of such a battery, I find it hard to believe it doesn't turn a profit at some point. And I understand that debunking low-effort accusations is asymmetric warfare. But why cite a random YouTube comment if you have no intention of addressing its claims? A more charitable interpretation is that it's meant to ragebait the readers. But to me, it seems like trying to make people feel ashamed for having doubts, by making a public example of a skeptic.

The battery (am assuming it's just sand and metal) should be very cheap compared to Lithium especially in the places where you generated solar energy (they are hot and have a lot of sand).

The problem is: is it profitable to even store energy there? There is no mention beyond "In operation, the sand battery has demonstrated a round trip efficiency of 90 percent.". That doesn't mean much if you do not compare it to Lithium and you don't give me a breakdown of the costs.

The other thing: Size. Is that big thing enough to store energy for a city? a neighborhood? A building? A house?

If it's enough just for a house, then I have trouble seeing this scale.

If your house is consuming 100MWh in heating on any reasonable timescale, you, ah, have problems :)