Heating cities with sand and water

The Green Energy Transition is starting to tease out some very smart solutions to ditching fossil fuels. Our friends in the North are leading the way in the decarbonisation of buildings and industry. Here's a couple of perfect examples.
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Reference links
Polar Night Energy Announcements
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Vantaa 90GWh water battery
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Bristol City Leap
www.bristolcityleap.co.uk/
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Check out other KZbin Climate Communicators
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Beckisphere: / @beckisphere
Our Changing Climate : / @ourchangingclimate
Engineering With Rosie / engineeringwithrosie
Ella Gilbert / drgilbz
Planet Proof / @planetproofofficial
Our Eden / @ouredencheck out Agora Energy Technology
agoraenergy.ca/agora-growing-...

[@matthewsmetalworkshop]

LOL, "those of you still using the wrong calibration system"

[@martyschrader]

Whenever I have to deal with another engineer still using any Imperial units I say, "You're not a high school kid any more. Use real measurements."

[@jeffoneill3429]

@@martyschraderI like it!

[@IrenESorius]

Truth,, 😎👍‍‍

[@kevansheppard2983]

Really, they call them freedom units, lol

[@assepa]

I saw an Aussie describing it as using "standard bananas".

[@HIRVIism]

This is the kind of stuff I like to hear about: using existing infrastructure to take advantage of renewables, without having to invent "magic tech". I'm also glad to hear that this kind of stuff is happening here in Finland, innovation in renewable energy is how we can stay relevant as a small country.

[@Kevin_Street]

It seems that Finland is doing some really innovative things when it comes to energy.

[@surters]

@@Kevin_Street They want to use their wood alcohol for other things than heating.

[@NATESOR]

I know not all solutions to storing energy will be this simple, but sometimes it's amazing how "Just heat some sand" or "Just pump water up a hill" can cover a huge amount of the problem.

[@DrakeN-ow1im]

The "KISS" priciple!

[@Pecisk]

Centralised principle is actually well known for almost a decade. However there is no room for "free market" in it so you can fill in the rest.

[@madshorn5826]

​@@Pecisk Yeah, but the "totally free market" argument is falling apart rapidly, and will have to give way to the "sustainable free'ish market" soon anyway. I recommend listening to Jason Hickel here on KZbin or reading his latest book for details. The first third is hard to stomach, telling how potentially screwed we are, but the last third is hopeful.

[@pikkuraami]

@@Pecisk Well, infrastructure (think of things similar to roads or railroads) usually can't have competition. It is just the way limited space in the world is or it isn't cost effective to build multiple infrastructures into same places. Same goes for district heating transfer pipes. On the otherhand, there can be many providers of that heat and heat generation can be competed on in free market. Of course limited by scope of needed infrastructure. Same way electricity can be bought from different producers.

[@PazLeBon]

ehh? surely allow water to flow down the hill

[@JMWflicks]

Britain made a good start with district heating by planning a heating grid powered by Battersea Power Station. As I understand it, when the Electricity Act of 1947 established the British Electricity Authority, that took over control of all existing power stations, they decided that selling heat was not in their remit, and decided that no future power stations would sell heat. But it was in their remit to promote the use of electric fires, electric radiators etc. this sounds clean and neat until you realise that they built power stations along the Thames in London using about 3 times the coal to supply electric heat than was required to produce the same heat in people's coal fires. The smoke from the power stations was a major contributer to the London smog, so they declared a smokeless zone, so people had to burn more electricity (or coal gas - but check out how much more coal that burned. The power stations (and the gasworks) were except from the smokeless zone rules! In my second year working in London, I was astonished by a smog in about February 1974, when my employer (Hawker Siddeley Aviation) closed the factory early and sent us home. Finding the traffic at a standstill, no chance of a bus coming any time soon, I walked home to Richmond. I remember worse smogs in Edinburgh before it went smokeless in 1958, but hadn't seen a smog since then. London still had Battersea, Chelsea, Kingston, and I don't know how many other power stations in the London Basin pouring out coal smoke. You could not see more than on car length ahead of you on the road. I could hear the blast of foghorns from ships about 12 miles downriver.

[@peteglass3496]

In the late 70s, I remember Walter Marshall, the long time head of the CEGB, being totally resistant to combined heat & power ideas following the first energy crisis, saying the same. Clearly there was a flaw in the original electricity nationalisation act to not even allow consideration of CHP. I also remember a smog in December 1975, I was cycling across Lambeth bridge with hardly any traffic when to my surprise I had a Mini following slowly on my tail, using me to guide them across the bridge - little things you don't forget!! I was a little too young to see smogs in my early years in Manchester, we were well out of the centre but the family told stories of driving from the first smokeless zone in the centre into a wall of fog where the zone hadn't yet come in.

[@cht2162]

We had "city steam" when I was a kid in Lockport, N.Y. U.S.A. The steam plant (downtown) was about 1/2 mile from us and the steam pipes were connected to probably 200 or so houses and businesses. No 'furnace' in the basement, just clean and efficient steam heat.

[@TaiViinikka]

Seems so cool. My town (Ajax, Ontario, Canada) had a central steam plant that was used by a bunch of the local industries for process heat. I don't think most of us got to use it in houses or apartments though!

[@marrow-zp7zt]

I must congratulate you Dave, you actually made it thru the pronunciation of our Finnish names! Most of Finnish cities and smaller towns have a district heating system using various heat sources. In the countryside, electric heating, heatpumps and firewood are used. We mostly have a nice 20-22 C indoor temperature regardless of the outdoor weather.

[@pattirockgarden4423]

I want to move to Finland. Please!

[@grafity1749]

In Vienna (austria) they will installed a huge heat pump at the sewage treatment plant wich will produce enough heat to heat 300.000 homes.

[@blindfaith8777]

In Minnesota I lived in a place with district heating and cooling and it was great. It was included in the rent which made for a nice cool summer. Would recommend.

[@blindfaith8777]

It looks like this project is much more impressive though. Bravo to them.

[@theoztreecrasher2647]

Wholey Jumpin' Jehosephat Batman! That's Communism! Minnesota Agin Globalist Asshats! The Lord will reward Uz! 😱😜🤣🤣

[@bugsygoo]

Damned commies!

[@nottooherbal]

Certainly seems the most hopeful of all the green solutions for keeping warm.

[@winrampen1174]

Dave, Have you seen Kensa's quite sensible scheme for using a low temp district heating system? Essentially this uses a low temperature distribution system which doesn't need insulation or fancy pipes to distribute water at a very modest temperature around an urban network. Each house then has what amounts to a ground-source heat pump to boost the temperature to what is needed to heat that particular home. The heat pumps work with a very high COP, seeing as the temperature rise is very modest. The individual home owners retain control of their heating. What's not to like?

[@nagualdesign]

Interesting.

[@2011ppower]

Having invested in Ripple cooperative wind and solar generation schemes I would also be quite keen to invest in storage solutions like these 👍😀

[@charlesashurst1816]

At our household, we've gone all in on solar panels and electrifying our furnace, our hot water heater, one of our vehicles, all our landscaping tools, and our other appliances. Our solar panels provided 68% of our electricity for 2023. Some might say, oh well that proves that solar isn't enough. I say, hey, we're 68% there already. From total reliance on fossil carbon to 68% not relying on fossil carbon is a pretty good achievement. But yes, there's still this big hole in our dream of getting all our energy from the sun, the Cache Valley, Utah, winter. During winter, our furnace is ravenous for up to 50 kW-hrs a day at exactly the time our solar panels are producing between nothing and 10 kW-hr per day. We have 27 kW-hr of battery storage but that is a pittance of what we need. What we need is more like a 1 MW-hr battery. That might happen one day, but right now, an affordable 1 MW-hr electrical storage battery is not on the horizon. But wait. What if, instead of an electrical storage battery, we had a 1 MW-hr thermal storage battery we could draw upon during the winter? Bingo, that just might plug the hole of winter. I'm not sure it would pencil out, but it'd be worth running some numbers on it.

[@1voluntaryist]

Tesla is going to have V to load, i.e., you can use your EV battery to power your house. It's the solution!

[@darkgalaxy5548]

Well as long as the sun shines, you're sitting pretty.

[@anguscampbell1533]

An Air to Air Heat Pump would help a lot?

[@dosadoodle]

​@@1voluntaryist That's probably fine for warmer climates. I think the main issue raised was that the winter season is challenging in northern climates: running a 40-50kWh daily deficit during that season would drain a sizable car battery during ~2 such days. BTW, Ford already offers vehicle to load with the F-150 Lightning. Given Tesla has been promising full self-driving will be delivered in "the next year" for almost a decade now makes me skeptical of anything Tesla claims they are "going to have". (I'm not a Tesla hater -- for example, Tesla deserves credit for pretty much single-handedly starting the electric car revolution -- but I'm also a Tesla realist who is aware Telsa doesn't deliver on many "just around the corner" promises.)

[@dosadoodle]

> What we need is more like a 1 MW-hr battery. Before even thinking about what you need more to improve your heating situation, consider getting an energy audit. Many homes could cut their heating requirements by 10%+ with under $1000 of air sealing and strategically placed insulation. While taking a home to "passive house" levels is not realistic for most, if you are even mentioning a 1MW-hr battery, you should be instead looking at the ~$200k cost of upgrading an existing 2000 square foot house to be a passive house (basically rebuild the house's shell, including the roof to be very tightly sealed and have substantial exterior insulation). Of course, the added cost for a new home to go passive is much smaller -- closer to $50k-$100k (and if that's too much, getting halfway there would probably only cost about $20k extra), because it can be planned more thoughtfully from the start.

[@carlbrenninkmeijer8925]

I am, as ever, grateful for the professional information !

[@lkrnpk]

If you didn't know Vattenfall is ''waterfall'' in English, it comes from ''Royal Waterfall Board'' which was the Swedish state's electric power company (and still is)

[@dave4882]

I'm actually working on a household heat storage device. Ceramic kiln filled with firebrick. Heat it when power is cheap, crack lid when power is Expensive.

[@michaelkhoo5846]

Growing up as a kid in the UK decades ago, we had these, "storage heaters," basically a large metal box filled with heat retaining bricks, it was designed to cycle on in the day, heat up, then cycle off in the evening and release the heat.

[@camlinhall1363]

Sounds great. What kind of a savings ratio or just plain cash saving do you estimate? I guess that depends on the supply contract?

[@Codysdab]

​@@michaelkhoo5846my mother had them until recently, she finally replaced them as they ran out of heat by the next evening when she needed it the most. Nice idea that thermodynamics didn't agree with.

[@rfrisbee1]

​@@michaelkhoo5846It's the other way around. Economy 7 hours are typically from midnight to 7am, so storage heaters would heat up in the night and then release the heat during the day.

[@michaelkhoo5846]

@@Codysdab Yes, I don't remember them working particularly well. They got quite warm, but never really radiated much heat above room temperature.

[@nurmihusa7780]

Poor Dave, he had his work cut out for him today. Even one or two of our Finnish words/names are an effort for English speakers but oh my you had a bumper crop of them in this video. 😂❤😂

[@anguscampbell1533]

There is a hockey stadium complex where I live. The heat removed when making the ice is pumped to a nearby swimming pool where it is used for space heating, heating water in the swimming pool and heating water for showers. This is an application which can be adapted for other facilities such as cold storage warehouses where large amounts of heat are now just expelled into the atmosphere but instead be stored in a heat battery such as the one mentioned in the video. Another good application would be capturing the waste heat to heat greenhouses.😀

[@alicequayle4625]

Server farms also have waste heat / need for cooling.

[@anguscampbell1533]

@@alicequayle4625 Great for heating Greenhouses in winter maybe? Hybrid systems is the way to go.

[@Kevin_Street]

Thanks for the new video! It's nice to see Polar Night making progress. Maybe Finland can be an example for the rest of us. District heating makes so much sense, it's just the efficiency you get from scaling things up.

[@willythemailboy2]

Great if you already have it, basically impossible if you don't.

[@philspencelayh5464]

In Newcastle there is "The Byker Wall " a continuous block of 600 houses built in the 1970s which has always had community heating.

[@user-ny3vn2zh8m]

Thanks. Sometimes it's good to have hope restored.

[@nickmcconnell1291]

Smart of Findland to start concentrating on storage. They'll need all they can get when the AMOC stops.

[@autohmae]

Yeah, when the AMOC goes amuck...

[@velisvideos6208]

Not to worry. Us Finns are natural pessimists. I personally am getting prepared for the AMOC calamity by stocking up whiskey. Just to keep warm...

[@nickmcconnell1291]

@@velisvideos6208 Great idea! In the spirit (pun intended) of cross ocean calamity friendship, I too will stock up! 😉

[@verttikoo2052]

We have sufficient amounts of everything. 🙄 You name one and we have it when it comes to natural resources 🙄

[@brianjonker510]

AMOC?

[@natenut1694]

"Using the wrong calibration system"😂

[@thevanthatrocked]

I heard we might be going back to pounds shillings and pence. The Brexit benefits committee are just working on the justification. Makes much more sense than this decimalisation nonsense.

[@timbushell8640]

@@thevanthatrocked and Yanks are voting to return to the monarchy...

[@1voluntaryist]

@@thevanthatrocked "Makes much more sense..."??? Obviously you're not a scientist, or academic or one who uses math.

[@1voluntaryist]

@@timbushell8640 I'd love to see the US Empire return to "English common law", or common sense or the politics of our Founding Fathers!

[@Neilhuny]

@@1voluntaryist On behalf of @thevanthatrocked, I'll point out that it was an ironic or sarcastic comment meant to make us all smile because it is so ridiculous. Unless you wish to withdraw the Declaration of Independence and be a colony of Britain's again?

[@kerryjlynch1]

In the late 1970's, I worked in the underground division of an electric utility in Portland, OR, USA. There was steam piped to nearly every building in the city center. Originally lots of cheap steam was available from in-city wood-products mills & power plants. When those closed, the utilities installed huge inefficient electrical boilers. District heating is very viable in cities. This is a terrific idea.

[@KF1]

Kind of like geothermal, but requiring the energy be first input. Hey, whatever works

[@EugeneLambert]

Another great and hopeful episode. Thanks.

[@anders21karlsson]

Enjoying yet another great video from Just have a think. Thanks.

[@mattesla]

I live in the UK too and I don't need to tell you how amazing our government is at doing good things 😢

[@sailaway8244]

Imagine funding an individual domestic point of use version..... but that wouldn't be "communitarisim" would it comrade 🤔

[@peteralflat281]

I'm sure if the UK government had some kind of a VIP lane to tender for the contracts it will all go swimmingly with no fraud whatsoever. 😢

[@estraume]

Almost 90 % of the inhabitants here in Iceland are connected to a district heating service that make use of geothermal heat. If someone develops technology for digging deeper wells more cost efficient, the same could be done many other places.

[@user-nv9sr4nr2s]

Wattenfall has built district heating solutions in the Netherlands as part of the transition away from gas. Customers are very unhappy because the rates are up to 3 times higher than in neighbouring countries. Once connected a customer/renter is left at the mercy of Wattenfall’s drive for profit.

[@nakfan]

Local heating is big in Denmark, too 👍Thanks for an excellent video with some needed hope for the future…

[@InYourDreams-Andia]

It's still frosty! This spring has been crazy cold (Finland). Great tech too, sand batteries

[@benlamprecht6414]

Thanks for yet another excellent video

[@rustysnails]

Many years ago a show appeared on Australian TV featuring a British Public Housing initiative. The design incorporated the two main sources of expenditure - beer and bread - in the form of a bakery and microbrewery with scavenged energy sent through the apartments in the multi story building. The future seems to be in decentralised self supporting integrated food, energy and heat production. And most governments push back against such holistic solutions.

[@Pecisk]

Finns are very practical about technology, and it is joy to watch them at work 😊

[@philjoyce7939]

Fahrenheit the "wrong calibration system" Haha. I love it. The temperature in Latin I call it.

[@TaiViinikka]

What's the temperature outside today, you ask? Why it's LXX F!

[@michaellorton8099]

Well done, as always. We rarely thank or pay homage to KZbin for providing a platform that allows the greatest cross-fertilization of ideas in human history. Take a bow, KZbin!

[@badbunnyTUBE]

Really happy to see these two projects on a worthy channel discussed. They have been quite well noticed on the national news here in Finland but i'm always pedsimistic on how well this is actually received in other parts of the world. Really interrested to see how they play out.

[@timchristie1601]

thanks for the update!

[@creedsixteen891]

Great show. Thanks again.

[@julianbouquet3536]

Always happy to see your videos

[@swedishdad]

This in combination with seasonal energy storage would be a gamechanger.

[@Cobwobbler]

I did hear of one of those heat networks working in Sheffield gathering heat from the steel works, til they shut down.. 😢

[@kennethfisher7013]

Finland is awesome.

[@PazLeBon]

if i remember right our old radiators in uk used to have like breeze blocks inside them that were heated by water and it radiated that heat from these bricks.. sounds pretty much the same thing

[@lamdao1242]

I’ve been looking for a follow up - so thank you for this update

[@FlameofDemocracy]

Excellent coverage.

[@fishyerik]

Another great episode! In principle, thermal storage gets better the bigger it is. Even a sufficiently large pile of [dry] sand could technically store all the heat we want, even with reasonably good round trip efficiency. And as long as the price of power keeps fluctuating between negative and astronomic, extracting some of that stored energy as power can be very reasonable even with modest energy efficiency. I haven't heard/read about underground thermal storage where the pressure is utilized to keep water well over 100 °C before, seems like a "no-brainer" to figure out to me, water has some really great advantages for thermal storage, and when you get most of the "pressure containment" to be able to increase the temperature well beyond 100 °C for free by placing it deep in the ground, it's strange that it isn't the norm. Still, I don't get why they want to heat air or water by resistive heating, and pump the heated air and water to the storage, when they can have the resistive heaters in the storage. I get it when other heat sources is used, and the need to transport heat out in some working fluid, but to just add heat from resistive heating to the storage, it seems impractical in a number of ways.

[@daveh6356]

Good to see these systems being realised so quickly. I guess it's urban building complexes next and finally a big sand thermal sump under our suburban driveways to make our heat pumps into 'cheat pumps' rather than trying to squeeze heat from a literal ice cube.

[@felixmosley1514]

Great video.... very encouraging to hear!

[@kb80550]

Excellent presentation.

[@pandit-jee-bihar]

This renewable will have relatively lower carbon footprint. Sand is also one of most abundant resources available on the planet.

[@stevengill1736]

Not as much as it used to be, at least the kind used in cement, but this tech could probably use kinds that aren't used in concrete, yay!

[@lolmaker777]

@@stevengill1736 The exact material does not matter to much. You want something that will hold a lot of heat for a long time without changing state. I'm sure that there are plenty of rock types that could do that.

[@herngong]

Fahrenheit, the wrong calibration system! I love you, Dave

[@pdxyadayada]

Keep posting positive news, when possible!

[@freudsigmund72]

another positive effect of this system, that the electric power used in summer for the inverters is when there is a surplus of solar power and there is (often) a negative price for electricity.

[@harveytheparaglidingchaser7039]

Brilliant. Keep it simple

[@jujitsu84asdf73]

Seems that this project is like the Drake Landing Solar Community in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. They have solar collectors on all of the roofs, which then pump the heat into an underground storage facility that keeps it there until they need it in the winter. The Canadian project seems more intelligent because you’re not trying to use a wind turbine to make electricity and then convert it to heat, where you’re going to have losses. The sun provides plenty of heat. All we need to do is make sure to store that heat for the winter.

[@williampierce2034]

Sounds good, lets keep an eye on this.

[@danielmadar9938]

Thanks

[@ptrhssn]

Thanks for your informative clips. Using low temperature thermal energy for low temperature home and water heating makes so much sense.

[@christyrogers7707]

Thanks for another great video, they really do give me hope that there's a possibility of a better future. Take care out there folks 👍

[@cesardeleon3856]

Gracias

[@Lord.Kiltridge]

People who say wind and solar will never be viable technologies are the same kind of people who said cars can never be self driving, subways could never be driverless, and elevators could never go without an operator. They are what I call, wrong.

[@paul1979uk2000]

It's been clear to see for a while that renewable can provide all our energy needs, but we need solutions on being able to store a lot of energy to get around the inconsistency of renewable energy. When you look at it, renewable energy is already accounting for a big amount of energy in many countries, especially in Europe, by 2030, a lot more EV cars and heat pumps are going to be thrown on the electrical system, so if the renewable energy percentage keeps rising, it's going to end up accounting for most of the energy, if not all the energy, especially if we find cheap, mass storage for that energy.

[@Lord.Kiltridge]

@@paul1979uk2000 I live in southern Ontario where currently about 25% of our electricity comes from a 100 year old generation station at Niagara falls.

[@jussikankinen9409]

Same people who drove horses and laughed automobiles

[@someblokecalleddave1]

I live in the UK in Essex (Basildon) and our estate (1973 build) was designed by a Scandinavian architect and we have a central estate heating system where the water and heating is run by a system that uses high pressure steam. In the recent years its changed from gas and oil to create the steam. I think the idea is great, but using oil or gas has its problems, our heating the last 2 winters has been expensive, the council bid for the current fuel at a price that was massively affected by the situation in Russia, so this system would suit our estate I'm sure.

[@tibsyy895]

For 2 fukin years I was commenting on every blog, KZbin channel to build sand batteries like Finland does! HALLELUJAH! 👍👍💪 The so cold experts in terms of knowledge are lagging 10 years !

[@buscseik]

I am talking about this since 2006 :) So nice to see these projects are coming online eventually.

[@gregknipe8772]

thank you again from the USA

[@Mikitzu92]

Suomi mainittu, tiedät mitä tehdä 👍

[@victorsooknarine7471]

Love It!! 🖖

[@DtWolfwood]

TES is so slept on. I swear, I work in the energy sector in NY USA, and all anyone ever talk able is more renewables. No one talks about storage, and when they do it's only ever about batteries.

[@petterbirgersson4489]

This was an interesting program. Have you covered the giant heatpump they are using to extract warmth from the sea water to the district heating system of Esbjerg, Denmark?

[@martincotterill823]

Great video, Dave, we're trying to push these ideas in Saarland

[@EdSurridge]

Short and sweet. Costs per Watt would be good even if very approximate? Thank you Dave and your super Patrons

[@MrAdopado]

Energy isn't costed per Watt ... it can be costed in Watt/hours though ...

[@thewyj]

I am part of a district heating system in London and whilst they are great in principal they are very expensive in the UK due to a lack of regulation. My understanding is that systems in Finland etc. are well regulated. Most of my bill is made up of a daily standing charge, with £/kwh being extremely low. So, it doesn't really matter how much I use, I basically get charged the same. Great if you are a family of 4, not great if you are a household of 1 who spends most of the day at the office. Although in fairness, this pricing structure meant we were relatively protected during the recent energy price spike.

[@Neilhuny]

That's intriguing! I would expect a standing charge to be sufficient to pay for installation and maintenance of a system over it's lifetime, which I would guess to be 25 yrs, at least. The £/kwh would then pay for the cost of supplying the heat - electricity for a water pump or 10, I guess. I wonder how your supplier justifies their pricing system? Can you tell us who it is without giving away too much private information away? I'd love to look at their webpage ...

[@peterjol]

You can even boil water quite easily with concentrated solar, If they can store it all underground and it lasts through the winter you wouldn't even have to generate any electricity to boil a lot of the water.

[@agsystems8220]

Concentrated solar needs cloud free skies. Not many places that is reliable.

[@thomasbeach7436]

Boil water maybe, but I don't think it could create electricity for the full winter unless it was huge.

[@holgre3470]

​@@thomasbeach7436It is to provide hot water through the district heating system. Electricity supplied by wind, solar, hydrothermal, marine and short term battery storage. Heating uses a lot of energy even in well insulated Finnish homes. If you can store the heat over the summer with their nearly 24hrs of daylight for use in the winter, it is a great solution.

[@shawnr771]

Thank you for the commentary. This is good news. A basically simple principle. Have you covered the MIT Concrete battery? Massive concrete structtures could serve double duty.

[@cherrytreepermaculture756]

This is awesome.

[@z.Sh4ped.Po0Tin]

Good news about the thermal energy storage projects, thanks! 👍 Smaller scale sand thermal storage by BatSand (from Latvia) is expensive and requires 30+ kW in solar panels but it should stil be viable for apartment blocks managed by housing communities or hotels or other companies requiring on industrial heat.

[@mb-3faze]

Wonder why Vantaan don't use a liquid that *doesn't* need to be pressurized to maintain a high temperature? (Cost, possibly).

[@elizabethsims9961]

Couldn’t more industry use these kinds of storage with their own waste heat to save money on their own plant’s needs then? Hmmm

[@nagualdesign]

The short answer is yes, to some degree. A major _perceived_ factor in thermal energy storage is the idea of surface area to volume ratio. So a sphere, with its large volume and minimal surface area will cool down more slowly than, say, a cube of the same volume due to its larger surface area. The volume holds the heat, the surface is where it loses the heat. Now if you double the height, width and depth of the storage unit you increase the volume by a factor of 8 but only increase the surface area by a factor of 4, so large, communal energy storage may well be more efficient than DIY. However, I say it's a major _perceived_ factor because it hasn't really been tested, and if you consider the miles of pipework required that will have a very large additional surface area to volume ratio it remains to be seen which is better. My money is on small scale storage.

[@achimrecktenwald9671]

At 140°C, the water will also remain sterile.

[@jonm7272]

Basically just scaled "economy 7 storage heaters". Anyone else remember them? 😊

[@Dumbo3.1428]

The north Europeans seem so innovative. As an environmentally conscious german I'm enve

[@Leopardipzg]

That's the end result of thousands of years of harsh evolution. If you haven't been innovative, you haven't been able to survive in the unforgiving northern conditions.

[@michaelkhoo5846]

(clears throat) Interestingly, there is no such thing as "common sand." Sand comes from different minerals, is created by different erosional processes, has different grain sizes, different angularity/smoothness/air gaps, and so on, and as a result has different physical properties. Some sand of particular properties, such as that used in construction, is indeed running out, leading to sand theft and sand smuggling. It would be interesting to know if they're using sand with any particular properties in this.

[@jmr]

Thermal is one of the storage solutions I'm most excited about because it seems the most sustainable. My question though is how we will heat them. Heat pumps could potentially offset losses of the system.

[@SimonEllwood]

It was covered in the video and it is heated with excess solar and wind power.

[@nagualdesign]

​@@SimonEllwood It also said that waste heat from local industries could be sequestered, with no explanation as to how you move thermal energy from (typically) warm-ish sources to a pretty hot storage unit. I mean, you could certainly pull thermal energy from a foundry or some such but the heat from office buildings, data centres and the like, where air-conditioning is typically in use, is much cooler than superheated water. I guess some kind of heat pumps would have to be used. 🤷🏻

[@jmr]

@@SimonEllwood You miss the greater point. That power must be either turned into heat or it could be used to "move" heat. The excess electric from wind and solar power is only around 100% efficient using resistive heating. Heat pumps can be used to "move" heat from the environment to thermal batteries and are essentially 5 times more productive then resistive heating.

[@SimonEllwood]

@@jmr How do you know what I missed from my comment? Stop making things up and assuming stuff.

[@mikemotorbike4283]

Solar Collectors of the rooftop kind for heating hot water often accomplish their goal within an hour. There's usually a surplus. Vacuum tube collectors work even on overcast days. They collect the true 1 KW/Metre energy available from the sun. The blisteringly hot transfer medium could heat sand.

[@Soothsayer210]

Can't help wondering the heat loss during the transmission to homes from the storage. How do they manage to insulate these pipes. What is the % of loss? I am sure it is connected to the distance too.

[@surters]

I think they have some 5-10cm insulation (of some kind), total loss is around 15-20% if well maintained,, it is very dependent on source temperature. A benefit is that the heat can come from multiple heat sources and the cheapest can used.

[@binmanblog]

Cardiff Council have also invested in district heating

[@jjamespacbell]

The reality is that the greatest benefits of solar/wind/storage vs fossil burning is economic not environmental benefits and that is a good thing.

[@spoonwinnipeg2021]

I would argue both equally. What is your reasoning?

[@thomasbeach7436]

That, I believe, is why China has invested so heavily into renewables. They don't have any oil or much quality coal if I remember correctly.

[@user-hj7be8rg4k]

​​@@spoonwinnipeg2021 probably because many care more about money rather than ethics

[@surters]

@@thomasbeach7436 They don't want to be dependent on Russia gas.

[@nfzeta128]

​@@surterswell it's more they're escaping the US control and the petrodollar system.

[@peteglass3496]

Storing excess renewable electricity as heat rather than electric I always feel is second best. However, if it is cheap enough and has potential for seasonal transfers of energy then there is definitely a use case in northern climates where peak heat needs are in winter. From the descriptions in the video, it also looks like sand batteries can store heat at higher temperatures, not perhaps very high temps, but at least mid-temperatures, above that easily achieved with heat pumps, which have many industrial uses.

[@larrykraft2743]

@JustHaveaThink, Sorry this is so off topic but I’m just wondering: How do you create your world map animations? I’m thinking of making videos to document my ancestors’ migrations, etc. and animations like that would really help to tell the story.

[@goonyhill1857]

So £62500 per household, great value over 5 years, well done Bristol 😮

[@jaapfolmer7791]

The fact that much of the transition is pretty low key and relatively silent makes it also pretty unstoppable. Which scares the gigawatts out of the fossil fuel people.

[@thefowlyetti2]

Its a great idea, but will only work in new towns, or areas that already have communal heating systems. No chance it can work in a place like UK with individual heating systems as the infrastructure costs would be impossible to fund.

[@happymusicschool-it1qc]

❤Dave❤

[@plunder1956]

Many people have Photo Voltaic Panels. How about using this type of technology (on a far smaller scale) Hose by House or Street by Street to harvest & store direct heat energy. Both Hot water and Hot Air solar panels were designed for roof-top use decades ago. But they never got much use because we needed an efficient long term heat-battery to store heat for use later.

[@snowstrobe]

Cooperative community provision is the path forward...

[@user-ok5lb5fp7y]

What about mining out the rock, insulating the cavern, filling the cavern with some of the excavated rock plus heat input and output equipment. The rock holds a lot more heat per volume than water, so you have to mine a smaller volume.

[@KF1]

That's essentially what they are doing. The rocks are just small

[@MrAdopado]

Sand is teeny tiny rocks. That's exactly what they are doing!

[@user-ok5lb5fp7y]

@@KF1 I was talking about the water option.

[@user-ok5lb5fp7y]

@@KF1 I was talking about the water option.

[@KF1]

@@user-ok5lb5fp7y Oh. Yeah water ain't that

[@dennisenright9347]

Is the Consolidated Edison steam distribution system in New York City considered a district heating system, or does the phrase only to municipal government owned systems?

[@MrAdopado]

That is indeed a district heating system. Most systems around the world are not government owned.

[@TimeTravelReads]

I guess I'll have to go searching through your past videos, but I'm still a bit confused about what district heating is and how it works. Can you still fiddle with the temperature within individual units?

[@MrAdopado]

There are different ways of doing it but all of them allow individual control within your own home.

[@dominicb405]

I’d like to see something for farms. Central battery that could heat a couple of houses, barns, greenhouses and equipment shops.

[@verttikoo2052]

They did it already. You can take heat out to warm the place, or cool the place, heat out and turn it to electricity with that sand battery.

[@claudiakitchen8094]

Just learned a bit about the Dragon 12 underwater kite that has been deployed by a Swedish company to generate power from ocean currents. If you have addressed this, I haven't seen it. I'd love to see you do a video about it.

[@ninefox344]

I'm curious what kind of energy loss the water cavern battery has since something that big is likely not insulated. If your source of energy is mostly waste heat and excess electricity then it shouldn't matter much so long as the energy loss rate is not crazy.